Paris

A wonderfully complex study of both the city, and it's people on a wonderfully complex group of characters. Every one was as interesting as any other, regardless of the stature of the actor playing them, and you were invested in them all because of it. Juliette Binoche and Albert Dupontel were the most familiar names to me, but their characters were not allowed to dominate the story.

All along the way you were taken on journeys that were unsignposted and shocking, in some cases, because of it.

A quite extraordinary tale that deserves a far wider audience than it is likely to get. Overall the film was a shining example, in my opinion, of what makes French cinema the best in the world.

...if Klapisch hadn't wasted his time on all the plot threads that run through this over-long film. From Karin Viard as the bakery owner with her new helper Sabrina Ouazani, to the overly macho fruit and veg guys (Albert Dupontel, Zinedine Soualem and Gilles Lellouche) with their supermodel day-trippers, there is just too much material for the modest little picture that this really is. Klapisch, I guess, wants to be the Balzac of today's French cinema, and he has much talent--I enjoyed Chacun Cherche son chat and L'Auberge espagnole--but he must be more selective in telling his stories.

I took away from this exercise the performances of Fabrice Luchini, the history prof who decides to go into TV work when the fabulous salary is dangled before his eyes (100,000 euros a year!) and François Cluzet as his harried brother, an architect working on a nightmarish housing development (the computerized promotion film of which is one of the highlights of 2008). Honorable mention to Julie Ferrier as the ex-wife of one of the fruit vendors.

I saw this flick yesterday, and I have to say that I loved it. I am a big fan of Klapisch earlier work( Le peril jeune, Peut etre, chacun cherche son chat,...), but I am yet to see Russian dolls and the Spanish apartment.

I have found this movie in line with the other movies. Not frankly funny, but not only depressing. I thought that all characters are driven by one main emotion, which categorises them into the different stereotypes of Parisians: The intellectual, the artist, the grocer, etc. I have found hard to identify to only one, but rather you can connect with all of them at the same time. I have found out that all of the characters are, in fact, Paris, and I loved the movie for it. Klapisch is a great director and has always been able to capture a lot of complex emotions on camera. I have to say that he did it again in this opus.

His big talent is that he is able to make us reflect on our own lives through trying to understand his characters, and I guess that is why some people did not particularly like this movie as they were forced to have an inside look, but personally, I find it a great exercise.

The photography, avoiding clichés, is great and shows a different side of Paris. It is showing the Paris where people live, and not particularly where people holiday in.

All in all, a great performance by the whole cast and crew. Thanks again mister Klapisch!!!

The movie is mostly made of vignettes following several characters, loosely interconnected in the city of Paris. Sounds familiar. To be honest, I've grown tired of the many dramas borrowing that formula. It's become an epidemic, especially since Magnolia. And so, I did not expect to enjoy Paris all that much. But I loved it and it moved me by its stripped down, sincere approach.

Director and writer Cédric Klapisch, unlike several of his contemporaries, did not feel the need to employ convoluted means to link these characters, or end the movie on some sort of unifying, highly artificial bang. Klapish wisely elects to concentrate on building strong characters. He succeeds, so much so that it becomes easy for him to create simple, believable story lines for them. The real link between them? They are fallible, restless, tentative, longing... in other words, they are human.

There's a large cast here and Klepish mostly concentrates on a few of them. Many of the smaller parts are actually as intriguing as the bigger roles and I caught myself wondering what would happen to those characters. But Klapisch stays the course and ends the movie much like it began. A lot is left unresolved, much like life. No Hollywood ending here but I could certainly have followed those characters for another hour if need be.

A beautiful, stripped down story but enough subtext and genuine quality to make for a great and lasting movie experience.

I was really looking forward to see this film for different reasons: The trailer made it look really heart filling, Juliet Binoche and basically because I love French cinema. So I finally got to do so, but man was I disappointed.

It wasn't utterly bad, but basically, for me, it just didn't grab me at any point. Everything and everyone (Each character) seemed so dry, so inexpressive, things would happen and they'd all be like "OH... o.k" and at moments they even seemed to contradict them self's. I don't know, I've seen lots of movies where each characters story is intertwined and some are good, some suck.

I've seen it in American, Italian, French, German and even Spanish cinema, so that kind of story telling is not unique in it self anymore and because of that, it's harder to do it, and I think that in this case, seeing how non of the stories needed the other to exist, none of them really coexisted as one and there fore there was no reason to tell them all in the same piece, well it simply wasn't the best of movies, again it doesn't utterly suck, it just isn't as good as it could have been.