Friday, December 28, 2007
Paris Je T'Aime Redux
I just got through with my second viewing of Paris Je T'Aime and I enoyed it even more than I did in a theatrical screening last summer. Anthology films with contributions from multiple directors usually consist of three or four one to two reelers. Spirits of the Dead, New York Stories and Boccacico 70 come to mind. There usually seems to be one or two very memorable, and a couple forgotten almost directly after viewing. The Scorsese short with Nick Nolte in New York Stories is very memorable to me as is Fellini's Toby Damnit in Spirits of the Dead, but I'll be darned if I remember any of the other sections of those films even though there were contributions by the likes of Louis Malle or Francis Ford Copolla.
Paris, Je T'aime lays out 18 films at five minutes with the theme of love and relationships in each with a different director and a two day shooting schedule for each. As Christopher Doyle, who directed one of the wildest films (Barbet Schroeder as a beauty supply salesman in a most surreal Chinatown Porte de Choisy) says in the extras featurette on the film "Five minutes could be the rest of your life." Somehow the ground rules for this omnibus, alhough a real role of the dice, comes out with a very high average of good to really good or even great films. This is kind of amazing, but so too is the variety of directors, actors and approaches to this challenge.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:29 PM
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