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Romain Duris as Pierre in Paris |
Stories from heart of the city less than pulsating
PARIS
Directed by Cedric Kaplisch
Certificate 12a
FROM the balcony of his tiny flat, Pierre can see the city. Paris lies beneath him, and he can watch its daily dramas play out.
But it provides a painful backdrop for Pierre’s own story. He was a dancer, but no more. Doctors have found something wrong with him – his ticker isn’t ticking properly – and he needs a heart transplant.
His sister, Elise, moves in with her three children to help him through the trauma of the condition. But it is the individual stories his neighbourhood hosts that really help him come to terms with what he has to face.
Director Cedric Kaplisch has chosen a swathe of Paris to tell a series of personal stories, linked simply by the fact the protagonists’ paths cross in the market, in the patisserie, in the street.
We watch the love lives of market traders unravel then ravel up again. We watch poor Pierre, wondering if he will ever make love again or enjoy a beer. We see the Cameroon immigrant wait anxiously for his brother to make the trip from Africa. We meet the history professor who falls for one of his students – an antidote to the pain of his father dying, while he celebrates in a TV documentary the history of the city he loves.
Hidden within all these vignettes is the stark message that we are all too consumed by our own centrifugal forces that our lives spin round.
The performances range from brilliant – Juilette Binoche turns in her usual standard – to unconvincing – it was hard to take the professor seriously when he was wearing his Peter Sellers trench coat.
There is one quirk, the sort you’d expect: the racist snob who runs the bakery is marvellously ridiculous and offers some surprisingly light relief.
But, at times, it feels like Kaplisch has really bitten off more than he can chew. Too many stories crowd their way in and deal with rather large topics: grief, mid-life crises, death, love, it’s all here.
He uses grand vistas from the roofs of Paris, but, like those cheap 20 cent telescopes at the top of the Eiffel Tower, he scans the horizon without focusing in and enlightening you in any way in particular. And clocking in at more than two hours, you will find yourself caring less and less as Kaplisch tries to make his points over and again. |
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