Paris, Je T'Aime (Well, Sometimes)

There is an art to the short film. Obviously, shorts share the same cinematic medium as their feature-length counterparts. But don't be fooled. The difference in length is not purely cosmetic. It's not just a detail. In order for a short film to be successful, the narrative conventions, the overall structure, and the pacing must accord with the restrictions (or some might say, liberties) of its truncated duration. If a réalisateur sets out to make a short film, but tries to squeeze in storylines more suitable for an epic, the director short changes the characters and ultimately, short changes the viewer. Better off taking a snapshot, a mere instance, and turning it into a rich, defining instance.

Wednesday night, I ventured into my Westwood 'hood to see Paris, Je T'Aime, a two-hour-long "compilation" of short films about l'amour that all take place (where else) in Paris. As a hardcore francophile, I had been dying to see this film ever since I heard about it over a year ago. At the time, I scoured the internet for a U.S. release date and when all the results came back "unknown," I accepted that Paris, Je T'Aime might never see the light of day in America. I even considered ponying up some serious scrilla for the expensive DVD import. Fortunately, First Look decided to handle the U.S. distribution and I got to pay the more moderate expense of a standard rate movie ticket.

You might be wondering why I tried to track this movie down so desperately. You might be thinking, "short films about Paris? I could take it or leave it." Did I forget to mention the biggest allure of Paris, Je T'Aime? Silly me. All of the shorts were shot by internationally acclaimed directors, many of them auteurs in their own right. Household names like the Coen Brothers, Alexander Payne, and Gus Van Sant all got behind the camera for some Frenchy, French action. Just check out the imdb credit listing. It's a veritable clusterf*@! of cinematic who's who. You can almost imagine a million film students salivating over the list. Unfortunately, like most clusterf*@!s (even well-reputed clusterf*@!s), you have to separate the wheat from the chaff. Paris, Je T'Aime features a number of flawed shorts. Many are trite, maudlin, or over-written. Many try to accomplish too much and collapse under the weight of their aspirations. But amid the rubble of mediocrity, there are a couple of killer shorts.

In total, Paris, Je T'Aime includes eighteen short films (only three of which I comfortably label "excellent," a handful of which I consider "good"). Fortunately, there is some variation between the films. To get the most bang out of the Parisian buck, each of the eighteen shorts takes place in a different arrondissement (or "district" to les américains). If you've ever been to Paris, you know that these districts are about as multifarious as the subsections of Los Angeles. The 16th arrondissement (champagne at the tennis club) and Pigalle (strippers and booze) are about as disparate as Beverly Hills and the Sunset Strip. Like the featured locales, the films themselves run the gamut from comedic to tragic to absurd, all with varying degrees of success.

The best short, hands down, is "Tuileries" by Joel and Ethan Coen. I hate to speak in such superlative terms, but the scene is perfectly orchestrated. The narrative itself is hilarious—an American tourist (Steve Buscemi) misinterprets the bizarre intricacies of French metro decorum and pays the consequences. But beyond the mere concept, the execution heightens the comedic effect. The Coen brothers utilize off-camera action and deceptive framing to keep the audience in the dark until they decide to pay off their well-conceived comedic set-ups. And trust me, the punchlines are fantastic. The jokes are mainly visual, just as they should be. The sharp cuts between extreme long shots and extreme close ups are positively witty. Buscemi's wordless performance is brilliant. Even the closing shots hit the right notes. A mountain of Mona Lisa postcards fall all over Buscemi while a snot-nosed French kid looks on. Fantastic. This film is the reason to see Paris, Je T'Aime. I laughed the whole way.

My choice for runner-up is Alexander Payne's short, "14th Arrondissement." The central character of "14th Arrondissement," is a lonely, unmarried, 40-something American woman. As you can imagine, she's reminiscent of Payne's middle-aged anti-heroes from other flicks, like Miles from Sideways and Mr. McAllister form Election, but I would almost say she's more sympathetic than the rest. Unlike Miles and McAllister, she's not cynical and she's never an asshole. Instead, there's a profound sadness and relatability to her character. The plot of the film centers around her much anticipated trip to Paris, which she describes in first-person narration, in broken French. By using this method of exposition, Payne smartly reveals exactly who this woman is. She takes French lessons for the love of it, but no matter how earnest her efforts, she never progresses beyond the level of textbook, French I sentences. The simple dialogue comes across like a beginners' essay, because that's exactly what it is. At the end of the day, she is quintessentially American. In one scene, we see her ditching the native French cuisine for a room service cheeseburger. In another, her strained attempts to speak French elicit responses in English. She never can catch a break. And while this portrait sounds depressing, "14th Arrondissement" is punctuated with comedic moments. The film is a tragi-comedy in the true sense of the word. All in all, it succeeds. The closing lines, like "Je suis vivante" and "je me sens vivante" ("I am alive" and "I feel alive," respectively) are perhaps a little hackneyed, but after witnessing this woman's journey from start to finish, the lines feel genuine.

The last short film that I will comment on is called "Loins du 16ème" (or "Far from the 16th"), shot by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas. From a formalist perspective, this was one of the most interesting. The camera work was wonderfully reflective of the thematic content of the film, which chronicled a Spanish nanny who must leave her own child in day care to watch after a rich woman's baby. As the nanny frantically rushed to her job, the directors utilized fast, rough, hand-held work to mimic her stressed frame of mind. When she first entered the expensive apartment, the extreme long shot with open door after open door after open door created rich layers and an unmistakable sense of distance between the nanny and her place in the apartment. To top it all off, as the nanny cared for the rich woman's child, her inattention and disinterest was palpable. Not only was she looking away from the crib, but the child's face was obscured by a blurred shot. Although the story was simple, I give this short props for its innovative and experimental camera work, which truly stood out.

It's hard to sum up Paris, Je T'Aime as a single film, because it really is a mixed bag. I would see it again, solely to watch the Coen brothers' short. I can't, however, vouch for the entirety of the film. As I said before, many of the shorts fall flat. But I will say this. There is variety. Whether good or bad, it is still a film for the A.D.D. mind that can only handle 5-10 minute segments at a time. So if you decide to see the film, do so at your own risk. Bonne chance.

A Grindhouse Divided

When two behemoths of postmodern cinema collaborate on a double-feature, it’s inevitable that the back-to-back films will be compared. Such is the case with Grindhouse, the self-consciously hip, exploitation fest that begins with Rodriguez’s zombie flick, Planet Terror, and ends with Tarantino’s take on the slasher movie, Death Proof. Can you appraise each film individually? Of course. But when it comes down it, if you’ve seen the films, you have a decision to make. Are you in the Rodriguez camp or the Tarantino camp? Before seeing the movie, I had asked a number of friends their opinion, and at every turn, I heard nothing but resounding endorsements for Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. In my case, all the hype surrounding Planet Terror created expectations that the film could not measure up to. But I think that even if I had not gone in with preconceived ideas about the films, I would have still ultimately fallen into that other camp, the less popular, less accepted Tarantino camp.

The Rodriguez joint does have the irrefutable cool factor—machine gun extremities, glossy overtures of violence, Bruce Willis cameos. The tight editing only amplifies the titillation level of the film. Quick cuts heighten the gun-slinging, knife-wielding, general badass-ery. As far as spectacle is concerned, Planet Terror delivers. But beyond the striking visuals, it fails to engage. I'll admit that Planet Terror resembles the bygone exploitation films much more closely than Tarantino’s Death Proof. Exploitation films are, first and foremost, defined by titillation and not by their substance. But I was hoping for something more. Instead of playing with the conventions of exploitation films and challenging the paradigm, as I wish he had done, Rodriguez merely created a new, more exaggerated exploitation flick. I could go on about other aspects that bothered me—biggest among them being the over-sexualization, visual dismemberment (through camera work) and flat affect of the female characters, which as a girl, felt instinctively misogynistic—but if I were to go into every point, I would be typing all day to the detriment of all else. When it comes down to it, my biggest gripe is that Planet Terror relies on its outlandish (though often ingenious) visuals to mask flat characters; and for a genre film, it doesn’t bring anything new to the table.

By contrast, Tarantino’s motorist killer film changes the rules of the game. Unlike the dime-store, slice-and-dice murderers featured in most slasher films, Tarantino chose a different kind of killer—a maniacal driver who stalks and gruesomely mows down beautiful girls. To be fair, the car-as-antagonist concept behind Death Proof isn’t the first of its kind. We’ve seen it before in Spielberg’s early film Duel and even, to a lesser extent, in arguably worse movies like Joyride. But regardless of how novel the concept may or may not be, the car enables Tarantino to experiment with his characters by erecting a necessary distance between the victims and the pursuer. The barrier of the car—this mediator between the killer and the victims—frames the story through the lens of sadistic voyeurism. Unlike, Rodriguez's film, where women are objectified for the viewer's pleasure, Tarantino objectifies women to expose the killer's twisted perspective. The viewing experience and the objectification are not about pure arousal, but about understanding the characters. Aside from all this, Tarantino's women are also much richer than Rodriguez's women. Tarantino's female victims are not slasher film archetypes. They are not flat, but rather dynamic. And it's not just the girls that are dynamic. The victim/predator relationship is not starkly defined, but is rather muddy and changeable. Tarantino is more concerned with nuance, less concerned with the obvious. But just in case you needed something that would really hit you, Tarantino gives you a killer closing shot, one that is nothing short of satisfying. I know this might make me unpopular, but at the end of the day, Tarantino gets my vote.