'Paris' review

Juliette Binoche (Credit: David Koskas/IFC)

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When Elise (Juliette Binoche) discovers that her brother, Pierre (Romain Duris), needs a heart transplant or he may die, she drops everything to care for him. Meanwhile, a noted history professor (Fabrice Luchini) begins anonymously texting a beautiful student (Melanie Laurent). Meanwhile, his brother (François Cluzet) suffers from anxiety over the normalcy of his life…a bakery owner spews casually racist comments to her customers…a vegetable salesman deals with a separation from his wife…a man from Cameroon embarks on a dangerous illegal immigration trek…and so on. With this many random people circling each other in a big city, it can’t be long before some sort of car accident impacts the action (actually, it’s about 90 minutes).

The buzz: Director Cédric Klapisch has built up a steady career of small, semi-successful films including “When the Cat’s Away” and “L’Auberge Espagnole (The Spanish Apartment)”—his biggest hit at home. This one has a fairly recognizable cast headed by Binoche and Duris (so excellent in “The Beat That My Heart Skipped”), and also including Cluzet, from the hit “Tell No One,” and Laurent, fresh off the success of “Inglourious Basterds” (although this film was made before Tarantino’s).

The verdict: The concept is laid out up front—Paris is a fragmented wellspring of men, stories and eras—but this mishmash is only sporadically successful. There are moments of forced whimsy (Cluzet’s CGI-animated nightmare, Luchini’s goofy dance to the American rock song “Land of 1000 Dances”), and everything boils down to people struggling to make romantic connections. To its credit, “Paris” is never oppressively serious, but beyond the spot-on work from Binoche and Duris, its character-based focus doesn’t prove to be impressively insightful either.

Did you know? Duris has been in six of the nine films Klapisch has directed, but Klapisch claims their rapport on the set of “Paris” was unusually solemn due to the serious health problems of the character.

[“Paris” is also available through “IFC In Theaters,” a video on demand service from select cable providers.]

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