To feel the spirit of a place after living there for just a month is a near-impossible challenge; to feel it through a brief movie is even more difficult. Yet "Paris" comes close to reveling the heart of its featured city in the space of two hours, thanks to the efforts of the talented director Cédric Klapisch and an extraordinary group of actresses and actors.
Talent is needed to keep such an expansive plot stable. Broadly, there are two main stories in "Paris" — a dancer, Pierre (Romain Duris), finds himself with a bad heart, a slim chance at survival and an estranged sister, Élise (Juliette Binoche), with whom he wants to reconcile. Meanwhile, Roland (Fabrice Luchini), a university professor whose father recently passed away, has become obsessed with one of his students, the aptly named Laetitia (Mélanie Laurent).
Neither of these plots appears particularly original by themselves, but what makes "Paris" a joy to watch is how its stories are told. Every single character, no matter how minor, is vivid and has memorable characteristics that enrich the central stories. Thanks to the multiple plots that weave in and out of each other, recurring minor characters appear at different times throughout the film. Particularly amazing is Karin Viard, whose depiction of a manic, micro-managing bakery owner is hilarious and wonderful. Through such attention to detail, Klapisch is able to catch the spirit of the city he loves.
Despite the number of characters that populate Klapisch's Paris, it is never difficult to keep track of them. This is remarkable because the movie jumps from place to place constantly. It is as though the audience, like the apartment-bound Pierre, must scan the people drifting past on the street, making stories up about them as they go by. The movie's strengths lie in both the excellent direction — which seems to cut randomly between stories and yet cleverly keeps the pace of "Paris" perfect — and acting so sharp that with 30 seconds of screen time an impoverished man on the street is given enough depth to make him immediately recognizable 45 minutes later.
The downside to this, of course, is that with the limited time on screen any single character can be allotted, it is difficult for anyone to become established with the force needed to make serious conversations feel genuine. This is mainly a problem in the relationship between Pierre and Élise; early in the movie, there are still too many other characters to keep track of, and their serious conversations about love and death do not seem quite convincing given that we barely know them. But by the last hour, both of them have hit their stride, and with more time to establish themselves, their relationship becomes fascinating and compelling.
In "Paris," the music is as rich, varied and lively as the people. The mix of French music, both classical and rock, helps highlight the tension in the city between old and new in a catchy and endearing way (albeit not an original one).
In fact, Klapisch works best when he focuses on telling the story of the city through elegant detail and does not try to force a predetermined message. At two or three painful points, a character decides to burst into a monologue about Paris, as though the writer suddenly got nervous that people would not understand the links between the loosely connected plots and would need a philosophizing character to set it all down. But these are really the only weak moments in the film.
Ultimately, "Paris" packs a lot into a small window of time and is all the richer for it. With so much energy and color, this film is able to create a near-perfect celluloid version of the city.
