Can't you speak French, the one time you're in Paris?
I missed it by a couple weeks when it was playing in Philadelphia, but thanks to the Ryder Film Series I have now caught up with Paris, je t'aime (and I thought I was going to have to settle for DVD). Eighteen short films by 21 writer/directors (some of them double up), collectively they illuminate what it means to be in the romance capital of the world for tourists and residents alike. A brief description of each will have to do.
Bruno Podalydés directs and stars in the first segment ("Montmartre") as a man who has as difficult a time finding a parking space as he does finding a woman. Gurinder Chadha directs the second segment ("Quais de Seine"), in which a trio of teenage boys fail to attract women with their lewd come-ons. Gus Van Sant directs the third segment ("Le Marais"), which details a thwarted pick-up in a print shop. Joel & Ethan Coen direct the fourth segment ("Tuileries"), a miniature comic masterpiece in which hapless tourist Steve Buscemi has an unusual encounter in the subway. Walter Salles & Daniela Thomas direct the fifth segment ("Loin du 16ème"), in which a young, single mother leaves her own baby in day care so she can travel across the city and be the nanny for another woman's baby. Christopher Doyle directs the bizarre sixth segment ("Porte de Choisy"), which is the first to break with naturalism and almost seems like a parody of the kind of story he would photograph for Wong Kar-Wai.
Isabel Coixet directs the seventh segment ("Bastille"), which stars Miranda Richardson as the wife of a man who's about to leave her when he gets an unexpected piece of news. Nobuhiro Suwa directs the eighth segment ("Place des Victoires"), in which grieving mother Juliette Binoche has an otherworldly encounter with cowboy Willem Dafoe. Sylvain Chomet (who made The Triplets of Belleville) directs the ninth segment ("Tour Eiffel") like a live-action cartoon, depicting the meet cute of a pair of mimes. Alfonso Cuarón directs the tenth segment ("Parc Monceau") in a single, unbroken take, with Nick Nolte carrying on a running conversation with his companion in both English and imperfect French. (At one point they even pass a poster for Van Sant's Elephant in a video store window, a nod to another film shot in long takes.) Olivier Assayas directs the eleventh segment ("Quartier des Enfants Rouges"), in which actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, in town to be in some costume thing, does business with her dealer. Oliver Schmitz directs the twelfth segment ("Place des Fêtes"), in which a medic administers first aid to a man who has seen her before.
Richard LaGravenese directs the thirteenth segment ("Pigalle"), in which Bob Hoskins runs into Fanny Ardant in the red light district, where they engage in an odd kind of role-play. Vincenzo Natali directs the fourteenth segment ("Quartier de la Madeleine"), in which backpacking tourist Elijah Wood has a run-in with a beautiful vampire (which is as silly as it sounds). Wes Craven directs the fifteenth segment ("Père-Lachaise"), in which couple Rufus Sewell and Emily Mortimer spend part of their early honeymoon visiting Oscar Wilde's grave. Tom Tykwer directs the sixteenth segment ("Faubourg Saint-Denis"), which is actually a self-contained short he made in 2004 called True, in which actress Natalie Portman calls up her blind boyfriend to break it off with him, triggering a flood of memories of their romance. Frédéric Auburtin & Gérard Depardieu direct the seventeenth segment ("Quartier Latin"), which was written by Gena Rowlands, who plays a woman who meets with her soon-to-be ex-husband Ben Gazzara at the cafe owned by Depardieu to discuss their impending divorce and trade some barbs. And Alexander Payne directs the final segment ("14th arrondissement"), in which a mail carrier describes her trip to Paris to her French class.
Each individual short averages around six minutes, so even if there are a few duds along the way (I'm thinking in particular of Natali's vampire sketch), they don't stick around long enough to bring the film as a whole down. Incidentally, this is apparently going to be followed by two more collective films, entitled New York, I Love You and Shanghai, I Love You. If the producers can't get Woody Allen to contribute to the former, then they really aren't doing their job right.