Paris Ahem

Watching Paris Je t'aime, a collection of short films by different directors set throughout the twenty arrondissements of Paris, I couldn't help wanting to interrupt, to butt in with my ideas for the stories.

Of course when you live here you have your own sense of the city and you feel that given the chance to choose any place in one arrondissement of Paris and shoot a five minute film, you would have done it differently. "Oh I wouldn't have chosen that spot" or "I would have chosen to shoot in the tunnels underground, not just the metro, but the place where the police uncovered an underground movie cinema a couple of years ago, to show that Paris is not just about what is on the surface." I couldn't help furrowing my brow and wondering: Do these directors know Paris well enough? And how well is enough?

With the opening film which took place in my nook, I immediately saddled my high-horse and no no no no nos started slumping out of my mouth. I feel that there is so much in Montmartre that is particular to Paris, which I haven't seen anywhere else in the world: old shops like my local cordonnier or old style bars with zincs like the Petit Montmartre, or the Bar Jaune where the only real drinking options are beer or shots of whiskey. Places like this would have served as good backgrounds, although I can personally envision a politically charged love scene in the anarchist bookstore or a sensual grape squashing scene up in the vineyard.

I was disappointed that the director used the problem of trying to find a parking spot as the story backdrop, particularly when you need to walk to most of the interesting places in Montmartre. In the end all we had to indicate that it really was Montmartre is that the car seemed to be parked on a slope, and at the end of the film we are given a parting glance of the Sacre Coeur.

In a few of the films I had to remind myself that I was in the cinema and stop the cicada, ever ready with his fiddle, from coming to dance a jig in my brain. These were the films that were really just obese cliches. Yes, yes, overall Paris Je t'aime did take a step away from the romantic cliche of Robert Doisneau's Kiss at the Hotel de Ville, so why replace this cliche with other cliches?

I'm sure there was a lot of referencing and homaging going on which I missed, but just because we are amid the Asian community in the 13th arrondissement, must the woman in the hairdressing salon be a sexy kung fu artist who can quickly flip to a demure stereotype in order not to upset the status quo and scare away the boys?

The vampires were worringly unoriginal - a boring revamp of Adam and Eve, with one less apple and more tomato-blood. Woman locked in her role of temptress. I was really hoping for the director's sake that it wasn't actually a film but an advertisement, and I was waiting for the she-vampire to cut the biting and invite Frodo for some champagne and marron glaces at Fauchon.

As for the dying woman with the red trench coat (who i'm sure has done quite a bit for next season's fashion in Paris - as well as attachable fur tails as a hot upcoming look, I now predict that we will be drowning in a red sea of trenchcoats), I couldn't help feeling that the message behind the film may have been that if you are a middle-aged woman, the only way you'll be able to woo your wayward husband back from his cliched relationship with an air hostess, is by catching a fatal disease.

I felt the film with Gena Rowlands and Ben Gazzara as a divorcing couple was one of the most genuine stories, snugly played out in a typical Paris bistro. We see that though with time past love becomes a dull ache like a dead rat in the stomach, if we are once again confronted with that person from our past, the ghost of that dead rat can start to gnaw at the walls of our stomach again. We see how the playful dynamic between this couple who used to be so close and still know each other, revives in the form of dried up flirtation.

I also liked the piece about the relationship between Natalie Portman and `the blind guy'. It was more like a beautiful, rhythmic poem than a film, or at least a catchy pop song. It showed how love, stretched over a period of time, plays itself out against many, many backdrops, from the laundromat to the swimming pool.

I wanted to biff the rigid tourist couple in the Père Lachaise Cemetery who were on the verge of marriage. The woman decides she doesn't want to marry the guy because he isn't witty like Oscar Wilde. Lucky for the guy, Oscar Wilde's ghost appears to him and gives him his power of wit, or at least possesses the body of the groom-to-be and rehashes his old quotes, winning back his bride-to-be. I couldn't help relishing the implications of this, that is, that if the groom continues on this merry way (that is, in the part we don't see because the film has already finished), the groom is going to cite some Oscarisms which aren't going to go down quite as well:
One should always be in love, that's the reason one should never marry.
How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralising as cigarettes, and far more expensive.

I was pleased to see my boyz in the street manifesting themselves as boyz on the quai in the short film where a group of boys were harrassing women who were walking by, showing a face of Paris I know so well. I personally would have shot this one at Place de Clichy and had the men as encircling sharks.