This is Paris (2008)

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Movie
German title That's Paris
Original title Paris
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 2008
length 130 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Cédric Klapisch
script Cédric Klapisch
production Bruno Levy
music Robert Burke
Loïc Dury
camera Christophe Beaucarne
cut Francine Sandberg
occupation

That's Paris is a French feature film from 2006–2008. Directed by Cédric Klapisch , who also wrote the script (and appears as the man on the roof in the nightmare of the architect Philippe). Unlike many other Paris films, the focus is not on the beautiful, the rich, intellectuals and snobs, but on small survivors and mentally damaged characters over the age of 30.

action

Pierre, a young dancer, learns from his doctor that he has a serious heart defect; presumably only a heart transplant could save his life. While he is waiting for a donor organ, his sister, the single social worker Elise, moves into his apartment with her three children to support him and alleviate his loneliness. The main pastime of the weakened and also slightly depressed Pierre is to watch the neighbors and passers-by from the balcony of his apartment and to think up stories about them.

The film, which is reminiscent of Robert Altman's Short Cuts in style , but also takes up the narrative tradition of Honoré de Balzac , retraces these stories by attaching itself to individual characters in episodes and following their daily routine for a while. The narrative strands occasionally overlap, some also run seamlessly into one another, overall the perspective is a tribute to the small and large drama of everyday life of very different people - and of course the city in which these lives take place: Paris . It is a film about love, family ties, loneliness and compassion that brings together the fates of the characters in an unexpected way.

Reviews

Focus of criticism

The German criticism tends to be happy about Klapisch's film. He tells stories without hectic, focuses on the ordinary and shows the strange in the familiar. In the multi-layered kaleidoscope, in the "wistful round dance" , he portrayed stories and places in a virtuoso manner, with humor and honest romance. The film is charming and tender; “Even if the stories brush against the cliché, you can feel the love for the people” . Klapisch has a keen sense for the great dramatic moments in the lives of his characters and relate the cliché motif of the professor who is having an affair with a student, cautiously like new cinematic territory. There are interesting social classes to be discovered and the proletarian figures among the characters have depth. The result is “an amusing and sad potpourri.” Klapisch dominates the genre of the episodic film like no other in the world, but the dialogues do not come close to the aptly malicious ones from his Un air de famille (1996).

The actors received comparatively little mention in the reviews. They seemed to be comfortable with Klapisch, and unlike the German actors, French actors seemed natural when they played simple people. Romain Duris is proving to be a versatile “major actor” , and Juliette Binoche is something that you can fall in love with again, said the taz reviewer . The Hamburger Abendblatt also considers her a ray of hope within the film. The world thinks that Fabrice Luchini, as a professor, is wonderfully able to convey the tragicomic of an older sage who falls in love with a young girl.

On the one hand, it was said that the characters' stories were intertwined without them always knowing. Another part of the criticism found that the narrative model of the ensemble film, in which individual characters need not be particularly original because they acquire heaviness as a whole, is an exhausted one. Several critics stated that the characters and their fates were sometimes drawn too briefly, their connections to one another were too weak and seemed random. Some stories are also dispensable, too arbitrary and too undramatic. In particular, the storyline about the African immigrant seems “applauded” . Klapisch, as the title suggests, ambitiously strives for a portrait of a metropolis, whereby the addition of the individual stories to a whole is not provided. One critic found that Klapisch was looking for the “well-known landmarks” of Paris. Others recognized that the Paris of postcard images worked as a contrast to the common man who was in the foreground. He mixes well-known Paris motifs with unused angles to create a picturesque unity and wins new views from the much-photographed city that have not already been seen a thousand times. He doesn't glorify the city, and where he shows the well-known Paris clichés he ironizes them.

Review mirror

positive

  • Stuttgarter Zeitung , July 17, 2008, p. 36, by Thomas Klingenmaier: Virtuoso juggling with people and places
    (controlled staging of individual stories and places, fresh look at the ordinary)
  • Der Tagesspiegel , July 17, 2008, p. 27, by Daniela Sannwald: Five times life
    (charming; gain new aspects from the often filmed Paris)
  • taz , July 17, 2008, p. 17, by Jochen Schmidt: This film has many eyes
    (small weaknesses are forgivable; told with love for people, played convincingly)
  • Die Welt , July 17, 2008, p. 25, by Matthias Heine: Baudelaire zum Anbaggern
    (enthusiastic; genre controlled, show new sides of Paris, successful characters)

Rather positive

  • Cinema No. 8/2008, p. 31, review by Karl-Heinz Schäfer
    (half-raised thumb; "honestly romantic")
  • film-dienst No. 15/2008, fd 38 805, p. 20, by Margret Köhler
    (amusing, sad, multi-layered Paris portrait)
  • Ray No. 7 + 8/2008, p. 86, by Walter Gasperi
    (charming between comedy and melancholy, ensemble plays with pleasure)

Mixed

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for So ist Paris . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , July 2008 (PDF; test number: 114 534 K).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g film-dienst No. 15/2008, fd 38 805, p. 20, by Margret Köhler
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Stuttgarter Zeitung, July 17, 2008, p. 36, by Thomas Klingenmaier: Virtuoso juggling with people and places
  4. ↑ a b c d Der Tagesspiegel, July 17, 2008, p. 27, by Daniela Sannwald: Five times life
  5. ↑ a b Cinema No. 8/2008 , p. 31, review by Karl-Heinz Schäfer
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g Die Welt, July 17, 2008, p. 25, by Matthias Heine: Baudelaire zum Anbaggern
  7. ↑ a b c d taz, July 17, 2008, p. 17, by Jochen Schmidt: This film has many eyes
  8. ↑ a b c d Hamburger Abendblatt, July 17, 2008, p. 9, by Volker Behrens: Vom Lieben und Leiden an der Seine
  9. ↑ a b c d Frankfurter Rundschau, July 17, 2008, p. 32, by Gerhard Midding: News from the old island
  10. ↑ Ray No. 7 + 8/2008, p. 86, by Walter Gasperi

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