Porquoi? (you ask) . . . The ads promise "18 stories by 21 directors" (I still haven't figured out the math on that one). It doesn't take a gourmand to know that is waay too many chefs to make a souffle, which is exactly what these cinematic vignettes amount to: light and airy to be sure, but not substantial enough to make a meal. (I wrote this before I read Stephen Holden's NYT review, where he makes a culinary comparison, too. We both must have seen it on empty stomachs).
I knew going in the track record for these omnibus films wasn't good: a collection of shorts by multiple directors are always graded on their worst episode. ("New York Stories" and "Aria" come to mind). Director Jim Jarmusch is the only director I can think of with a talent for this genre: he's done two, the latest being "Coffee & Cigarettes," and I walked out of both with a positive impression.
And here, the worst is very, very bad. How Bad? French mimes-bad!
Yes, you read that correctly: by the fourth episode a French director resorts to the oldest French cliche imaginable -- two mimes miming their way around Paris! If that doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouth, an even more tiresome vignette is yet to come: something to do with karate-chopping Asian hairdresssers. (I stopped paying attention early on). Pointless, incomprehensible, and stupid. And having nothing to do with Paris, as far as I could tell.
Obviously, no one in control of this venture had the power to say "Sorry, Christopher Doyle; your segment sucks so we're cutting it for the good of the movie" (they'd have to change those ads to '17/20', which they should have done anyway, since Doyle is a cinematographer, and obviously not a director). Which is a shame, because each weak entry dilutes the power of what precedes it. I'd love an extra five minutes with Juliette Binoche, for example, who plays a grieving mother, or the odd couple in Monmartre whose chance meeting opens the film.Those were intriguing characters you wish you had more time with, like the immigrant domestic played by Catalina Sandino Moreno, or Fanny Ardant and Bob Hoskins as a bickering married couple. But there time on screen is over much too soon.
Some directors were able to create little gems with their limited time: the directors who 'got it' are mostly Anglos, curiously (Joel & Ethan Coen, Wes Craven's sweet interlude over a grave in a cemetery: sweet because the cemetery is Pere Lachaise, the grave Oscar Wilde's, and the couple Emily Mortimer and Rufus Sewell). But the three directors who best captured the essence of life, love and Paris are:
3) Tom Tykwer's recap of an entire relationship in the space between two phone calls that actress Natalie Portman makes to her blind boyfriend ("Faubourg Saint-Denis") .
2) the great Alfonso Cuaron's tracking shot of Nick Nolte's energetic conversation with a female companion (Ludivine Sagnier, regrettably filmed in shadows and from a distance) as they walk down a street in 'Parc Monceau'. The subject of their dialogue isn't revealed until the clever payoff at the end.
1) and perhaps the best: Alexander Payne's view of the city through the eyes of a very American tourist ("14th arrondissement"). This Denver postal worker narrates, in her hilariously beginner's French, what it is that makes this city unique, succinctly capturing the allure the City of Light has for all of us foreigners. Now that's a touching love letter, in any language.
