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Contains very strong languageMore of an experiment than a fully fleged feature film, Paris Je T'Aime gathers more than a dozen directors from all over the world and offers them the world's most romantic city as a backdrop. The result is, inevitably, a mixed bag: eighteen filmettes lasting around eight minutes each, veering in tone from light and fluffy to bitterly tragic. If there is a recurring theme, it's the power of love, or perhaps the endless possibilities of the city.
It's hard to review Paris Je Taime as a whole, because it never really comes together. It's like scoffing a whole bag of Revels in one go, orange fondant, coffee and all. So, let's pick out some highlights: the Coen Brothers have come up with a wry essay on American paranoia, told from the perspective of a tourist (Steve Buscemi) stuck in a lonely Metro station.
Wes Craven's stagey segment is set in a graveyard, but abandons his horror roots for romantic comedy, and chucks in the ghost of Oscar Wilde to offer relationship advice. Juliette Binoche is as luminous as ever as a grieving mother in Nobuhiro Suwa's brief, enigmatic fairytale section, and Tom Twyker draws an unusually sensitive performance from Natalie Portman, as an actress falling in love with a blind man.
"OFFERS A FEW WHIMSICAL SMILES"
Other contributors are less successful. Alexander Payne's tale of a Denver housewife finding peace in Paris is horribly patronising, and Gurinder Chadha offers an equally shallow lesson in race relations. Taken as a whole, Paris Je T'Aime slips down easily enough and offers a few whimsical smiles, but you may find yourself craving more substantial nourishment before the end.
Paris Je T'Aime is out in UK cinemas on 29th June 2007
Highly entertaining, and the Denver housewife piece hilarious.
