Sunday, July 13, 2008

Paris, Je T'aime


Finally got around to watching this fantabulous film. I knew it was all about "vignettes," but there are 18 of the damn things! And unlike other films that attempt such super-dimensional wanderings, PJT really doesn't try to connect any of the people. A few of them meet at the end, and it's assumed that in some strange (and strangely Parisian) way, they will all be connected in some way.

I thoroughly enjoyed all of them. Some were so aggressively minimalist that I wanted to shriek, but on the whole they were nearly perfect. Midway through, a vignette by Nobuhiro Suwa features Juliette Binoche remembering her dead son. Willem Defoe plays a magical cowboy who comes to take away her child('s soul?) and leave her in peace. It was terribly heartwrenching to watch, but it was followed immediately by a magically-real vignette about a child relating the story of his parents. They were mimes who met in jail. First I'm crying about this dead boy, then I'm laughing and crying my eyes out over these beautifully insane mimes. I think it is patently unfair to jerk me around like that. I will be placing this film in the top level of my Brain Queue.