Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
Written & Directed by: Christophe Honoré. Produced by: Paulo Branco. Director of Photography: Jean-Louis Vialard. Edited by: Chantal Hymans. Music by: Alex Beaupain. Released by: IFC First Take. Language: French with English subtitles. Country of Origin: France. 92 min. Not Rated. With: Romain Duris, Louis Garrel, Guy Marchand, Joana Preiss, Alice Butaud & Marie-France Pisier.
Writer/director Christophe Honoré too self-consciously aims for a contemporary homage to the
French New Wave in the first half of his Dans Paris, which settles down, though, in its second half into a surprisingly tender family drama.
Its opening scene of two handsome young men in bed with a pretty woman is an obvious tribute to François Truffaut’s Jules and Jim. Then
Louis Garrel arises to address the camera on a balcony overlooking the Eiffel Tower and explains he will be both the omniscient narrator and the
character Jonathan. The other hunk in bed is his brother, and initially Paul (Romain Duris) becomes the film’s focus while Jonathan literally runs a
circle around Paris, getting waylaid by one woman after another.
As argumentative as characters in an Eric Rohmer film, the tempestuous relationship between Paul and his lover Anna (Joana Preiss, uninhibited here
as in the director’s Ma Mère) is presented through a scattershot montage. The New Wave boilerplate is echoed throughout with references to many
specific films – Alex Beaupain’s beautiful jazzy score, the breezy jump cuts, and passing references to American books and films.
Dans Paris is most entertaining when Honoré teases with these unpredictable allusions.
Paul spends the second half of the film depressed abed, the opposite of Duris’s emotional piano-playing gangster in
The Beat That My Heart Skipped. The brothers’ divorced father Mirko (Guy Marchand) shuffles around their apartment cooking, tempting Paul
with food, particularly a lot of chicken soup, as a cure for his son’s suicidal thoughts. Their mother (Marie-France Pisier) arrives briefly to cheer
Paul up, sharing some private jokes.
As in Jacques Rivette films, “very old sorrows” about the family are revealed very gradually. The bright Christmas atmosphere out in the Paris
streets seeps into the crowded apartment, and the approach of the holiday triggers haunting memories and irresistible temptations for the brothers,
even as
their parents blithely ignore a family tragedy anniversary.
For a filmmaker who has prided himself on challenging bourgeois morality, the unexpected climaxes are two intimate celebrations of the power of
remembering the hopefulness of love, with the revived Paul initiating both. First romantic love, as the estranged Paul and Anna softly trade the
ironic poetry of a Beaupain-penned song “Avant la Haine” (“Before the Hate”) over the phone. Then fraternal love, as the brothers share reading a children’s
picture book by Grégoire Solotareff on overcoming fear and learning to trust. The brothers reach quiet insights that finally have more impact than the
rest of Honoré’s pastiche.
In addition to its theatrical release, Dans Paris is immediately available on IFC In Theaters video on demand.
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