Dans Paris

Cast: Marie-France Pisier, Joana Preiss, Louis Garrel, Romain Duris, Guy Marchand, Alice Butaud, Helena Noguerra, Judith El Zein, Annabelle Hettmann
Language: English
Banner: Gemini Films
Director: Christophe Honore
Producer: Paulo Branco
Camera: Jean-Louis Vialard
Story: Christophe Honore
Screenplay: Christophe Honore
Music: Alex Beaupain
Distribution: First Take (IFC)
Year: 2007

If an admirable attempt at the iconoclastic, “Dans Paris” is too much film school for an afternoon.  Lacks even the modest structure and resolution that most audiences will demand

If you saw Romain Duris in the film in which he was nominated  for the César Best Actor, “The Beat That My Heart Skipped” (2005), and loved both him and the film, remember him that way and skip this yell-a-thon about love lost, love regained and every kind of love in between.  Director/writer Christophe Honoré received a nomination for the Cannes Golden Palm this year for his “Chansons d'amour” so there is no doubt he can put it out.  But at some point the movie-going public is going to want a plot and this film is as devoid of plot as it gets.  In fact, that was probably the point as the film is a strong example of the influence of alpha French director François Truffaut in particular and the 1960s French New Wave in general.

Starring alongside Duris are two excellent young performers.  Louis Garrel won the César Most Promising Actor for “Regular Lovers” in 2006 and plays the depressed Duris’ clownish brother in this film.  Joana Preiss (“Paris, I Love You,” 2006) plays Duris’ estranged lover Anna and the proximate cause of his depression, although the real cause of his depression is having to cope with life itself.  Or so we are told.  César winners Guy Marchand and Marie-France Pisier are in the film as the father and mother of the two boys but their parts are limited.

The film begins with a long and unusual monologue by Garrel to the audience explaining his place in the film, his place outside of the film and, in fact, his place as omniscient seer of things in general.  The initial monologue would have been OK, we could tolerate the in-your-face attitude that was fair warning of what was to follow.  But the assertion of general omniscience in the context of the character’s womanizing is hard to place in the cosmic nature of it all. 

Both brothers come off more like spoiled brats than being-here-now sophists.  Just as one or the other is on the verge of doing something believable, there is another explosion of heroic but foundationless vitriol that leaves us lurching for the volume control.  The script not only fails to provide the actors with workable lines, it seems to be constantly challenging them to survive the act of making the film.  In fact, it challenges the audience to be a part of the experience at the same time.

The film skips from scene to scene as a set of semi-connected vignettes about human suffering and the inevitable conflict of life that seem to highlight the irrational in all of us.  But when it becomes apparent that the irrationality is all there is, the movie crosses the line into self-indulgent experimentation.  There is no particular consistency of behavior on the part of the boys, and their mother, father and love interest Anna are part of the sets. 

Water is another part of the set.  It both cleanses and tortures at the same time.  When one of the brothers jump off a bridge, the other does, too, as part of the never-ending challenge for the audience to figure out what is going on with these two.  The mother is embraced but the father is rejected.

Just as some semblance of a plot nears, the film veers away into another disjointed set of emotional outbursts, defying the audience to anticipate their occurrence or to come even close to predicting their outcome.  The film insists that the audience witness life and not lulled into another fairy tale.  Truffaut warned, “French cinema is being crushed by meaningless legends.”  Not if director Honoré has anything to say about it.

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