Ménage a vingt-deux

>> Twenty-two directors take on the City
of Lights with varying results in the
anthology film Paris, je t’aime

by MALCOLM FRASER

The multi-director anthology film is a tricky proposition, its dangers—scattershot style, vast chasms of difference in quality between segments and the strong likelihood of the best parts ending too quickly—inherent in its very form. That didn’t stop the ambitious producers of Paris, je t’aime from mounting their 22-director homage to the quintessential romantic city, and though the result is typically uneven, luckily it’s not a dud like the glib ’90s comp film Four Rooms.

Clearly inspired by the 1965 Paris vu par... (whose directors included nouvelle vague heavyweights Godard, Rohmer and Chabrol), Paris, je t’aime is, like its predecessor, divided into segments set in various Parisian neighbourhoods. Presumably in a nod to the multicultural and international flavour of the city today, only a handful of the directors are native Frenchmen. Only a few touch on what we might think of as stereotypically “Parisian” subjects, and only one features a mime.

The film includes contributions from some pretty heavy hitters, and most of them deliver on their reputations. Gus Van Sant’s segment is a poignant, subtle take on homoerotic connection and language miscommunication; the Coen brothers’, starring Steve Buscemi, is slight but funny and stylish; Alfonso Cuarón’s, with Ludivine Sagnier and the now-iconic Nick Nolte, is a clever subversion of expectations. The charming Maggie Gyllenhaal (who knew she spoke such good French?) lights up the screen in a segment by Olivier Assayas.

Christopher Doyle, the ex-Wong Kar-Wai cinematographer, delivers one of the more impressionistic segments, about a hair-product salesman (maverick director Barbet Schroeder) who meets his match in a queen-bee salon owner (Li Xin). Tom Tykwer almost redeems himself for the awful Perfume with an evocative romance starring Natalie Portman. And the ubiquitous Gérard Depardieu, perhaps feeling it wouldn’t be a proper French film without him, co-directs and appears in a bittersweet encounter between Cassavetes icons Ben Gazzara and Gena Rowlands.

The only true stinker is Vincenzo Natali’s segment, a cheeseball vampire romance with Elijah Wood. All in all, fans of the City of Light and completists of the various directors’ oeuvres will enjoy the occasional delights scattered amid the compilation’s ups and downs.

Paris, je t’aime opens this
Friday, May 25

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