Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Tue Oct 31, 2006 6:46 am 
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LOUIS GARREL AND ROMAIN DURIS IN DANS PARIS

[Re-viewed for the March 2007 New York Rendez-Vous with French Cinema here, (Scroll down for an additional comment.)]

A manic-depressive dive back into the New Wave

After the turn-off of his previous Ma Mère and the gloomy intensity of previous films, Christophe Honoré has produced a fourth feature that's economical and entertaining, a remarkable balance of moods that (as before) studies parental and sibling relationships, this time with elegant dialogue and amusing contrasts of scenes and characters and an evocation of the French New Wave that gives two of France's best and hottest young male film actors a chance for virtuoso performances.

Dark and light come in the form of the two brothers these actors play. One, Paul (Romain Duris), has broken up with his girlfriend (Joana Preiss) and, depressed after a series of disastrous scenes which we observe early on in back-and-forth jump-cut sequences that are intentionally confused in chronology, goes back to live with his caring father.

Though Paul's younger brother Jonathan (Louis Garrel), who's never left the paternal nest, tells us speaking into the camera in an early shot (which establishes the light and detached side of the film), that he's the narrator but only a lesser character in the story, he emerges also as an essential foil to Paul because of his success with the ladies and his larky attitude. He's as frolicsome as his brother is worrisomely dark-spirited and hopeless.

When not reading La Repubblica and watching Italian TV, Papà Mirko (Guy Marchand) does domestic things like make chicken soup and drag home a big Christmas tree he decorates alone.

Jonathan makes it with three girls in one day while trying to lure Paul shopping for presents at Monoprix. Dad summons his estranged wife and the boy's mother (Marie-France Pisier, of Jacques Rivette's 1974 Céline and Julie Go Boating, which this film evokes) to cheer up Paul too. And she succeeds: Paul's depression isn't seen one-dimensionally. Dad is amusingly cuddly, while Garrel's high spirits constantly contrast with Duris' glumness and relative inertia. But that inertia also has its sudden interruptions: he goes out early in the morning and jumps into the Seine, then returns wet and surprised at what he's done -- and at still being alive. Jonathan/Garrel is also clearly the Jean-Pierre Léaud of our days, and a bedroom shot links him with Godard's Belmondo. (Garrel is well-suited as a reborn Sixties icon after starring in his father Philippe's great 2005 evocation of '68, Regular Lovers as well as the earlier Bertolucci '68 piece The Dreamers, and his looks match the dash of Belmondo with the polish of Léaud. Duris has already shown his mercurial potential in a string of romantic comedies and his starring role in Jacques Audiard's dark, brilliant 2005 crime/art film, The Beat My Heart Skipped.

There's a lot of formally written and frenetically spoken French dialogue; Garrel is a master of the pout, snicker, and slurred one-liner; Duris emerges as the actor with more depth, while Garrel shows a new light, comedic side we haven't seen much of before. Marchand is appealing, and the movie has energy. Les Inrockuptibles, the influential and hip French review, calls this "The best French film of the year." Dans Paris is an actors', writer's, editor's tour de force that creates its own unique tragi-comic mood.

Paris, All Saints Day, 2006.

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To be shown March. 1 and 3, 2007 in the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema series sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Unifrance, at the Walter Reade Theater and the IFC Center in New York City. US distributor: IFC First Take Films.

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COMMENTS ON SECOND VIEWING.

It was interesting to see this again in New York right after Philippe Lioret's Don't Worry, I'm Fine/Je vais bien, ne t'en fais pas, which also deals with depression. Honoré's approach is a great deal more playful but perhaps more accurate in seeing this emotional state as variable and placing it within a richer family context. This is not to say Lioret's approach is invalid, but Honoré's seems more nuanced and certainly more cinematic. Paul has moments of absolute hilarity with his mother during her visit. He jumps in the Seine at 4 a.m., but then finds his way back and, terrified, pulls Jonathan to himself as he soaks in a tub of hot water. Quite unexpectly, over the telephone, inn sweet, hoarse voices, he and Anna sing an acapella duet Honoré composed for them. It's another moment that's playful, light and touching, evocative of the New Wave, and an acknowledgment that periods of sorrow can nonetheless contain moments of beauty and hope. My review overlooked Loup (Lou Rambert Preiss), Paul and Anna's young teenage son, who is mentioned and briefly seen in a car with the pair early on--the song ends with Paul's "Say hello to Loup." Honoré also later touchingly inserts into a scene between the two brothers a bit from his own children's book about a wolf and a rabbit that are friends.)

All this which might sound like mere whimsy works exceptionally well because of the film's ease with its own casual playfulness -- and because the actors work so well together. As has been noted by many, Duris and Garrel are enlivened for us by being cast against type: Duris has often been an intense or manic character; here he's dull and sad. Garrel was the suicidal (and monogamous) poet in his father's Regular Lovers/Les amants réguliers (and similar in Bertolucci's The Dreamers); here he's a lighthearted wastrel, seducer, and clown. Both are doing some of their best work yet here.

Another thing that stood out this time was the assurance of the opening and closing credits with their thin moving streams of type above and below a long shot of the road beside the Seine with the cars speeding toward us at night with headlights blaring--emphasizing the city, suggesting the Christmas lights in the street we also see, and capturing the dynamism of Jonathan's runs through the street to his trysts. A light improvised jazz solo piano score serves to underline and provide a delicate obligato to some of the scenes, lightening ones that would otherwise be heavy.

Guy Marchand exudes tons of paternal warmth, pulls Jonathan out of bed and makes him drink coffee in the second scene. This comes after Jonathan's first address to the audience on the balcony, a sequence which is outside the narrative and comments upon it -- and is incidentally another lighthearted distancing device that yet creates an effect of intimacy--this time with the audience. And later Mirko does everything he can to make Paul come and eat something. This is depression seen more informally as congenital. Mirko will have nothing of doctors and pills: the family is the healing unit. We learn of an earlier sister who committed suicide in her teens, and speaking to Jonathan's girlfriend Alice (Alice Butaud) Paul describes depression as something we're given a certain supply of at birth, like the color of our eyes. All this may be poetic and unscientific, but it is cinematic as hell, and it leaves a stronger, warmer impression than Lioret's ultimately rather naive and not entirely authentic treatment. In retrospect Lioret's story contains elements that are shoved upon us too quickly and too unconvincingly to be either real or memorable. Inside Paris does not attempt epic profundity. In his admiring Variety review Jay Weissberg says "'Inside Paris' is that rarity, a genuinely honest, unpretentious and delightful, small film, alternately sober and effervescent, steering clear of either heavy-going philosophizing or dreaded whimsy."

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.


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