Before you even realise it, you have fallen in love with Paris. The mystic romanticism of the vignettes flares up above you and the halo fixes itself atop your mind throughout the beautiful movie “Paris, I love you”. The panoramic view of Paris that the first of vignettes ends with slowly sucks you in; the air of deep conquest in slightest of the stories embraces you on the inside; background score, like a river of warm feeling suffuses through you, a quiet rectitude.
“Care to join us?” inquires the old man. The muslim girl with traditional dupatta over her head blushes as the young man joins her on her walk homewards. The movie is subtle and sublime; it is an indulgence, of all the directors. A pleasure for the viewers, movie does not suffer from a feeling of looseness, a disjointed feel. On the contrary, it is cohesive (with the city of Paris forming the large canvass on which different directors have cleverly and carefully knitted flowers).
“Don’t shoot people in the face, its not nice” advises his mother to a kid. Coen Brothers with their trademark close up shots up the ante. A young couple feels annoyed by a foreign visitor, so they bash him up in the face. But the brothers’ take of the inconsequential drama turns the slow trot of the movie into an affectionate tale of comic personalities. Its love of paris, a different kind to that of the other directors before them in the movie.
“Behaving like a man in love, he became a man in love” the voiceover clarifies in the tale of a man who falls for his wife after learning about her chronic illness. Not all the tales are explicating of their stand, but I reckon, they are revealing in themselves insofar that it is needed to fit them up into the movie. Beyond this, there doesn’t appear to be, an attempt made, to familiarise the viewer with the atmosphere of the movie at all. It occurs to you quite late into the movie, that it is not an ordinary movie-this one is rich, a promontory.
The vignette with Maggie gyllenhall falling for a drug vendor may be cinematic but it captures the movie’s essence. The scenes with Paris dissolving into the night, slowly, some parts of the city abruptly, some in a sing song fashion; the night life of Paris, entertaining and lovely, with strangers falling for each other, surprisingly all of this is believable, and charming.
And the accidental yet supple love story between the vampires. A vignette of love between eccentric old couple, another one between a bereaved poor janitor and a rich girl, yet another one between a mother and her deceased son. There is one at Oscar Wilde’s grave, one between a blind guy and an actress. This movie is an uncompromising tale of tales.
Some tales are bitter (like the couple who fall in love with divorce papers in their hands), some are intriguing (like the one with mailwoman falling in love, all alone, with Paris), others are engaging. “Paris, I love you” makes you say just that.
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