Ex-Default Setting
rue Cazotte, originally uploaded by 160507.
Paris, je t’aime; the movie not so much. It consists of short episodes set in the different arrondissements and directed by a bunch of well-known directors including Alfonso Cuaron, Gus Van Sant, and Tom Tykwer. The idea is to make Paris seem romantic and worth visiting; the fact that it’s become necessary to make a movie to deliver that point says a lot about Paris’s image these days. You mean Paris isn’t the default setting for romance anymore?
The producers reportedly got the idea from Love, Actually, which made London seem romantic and exciting; the memory of Love, Actually still makes me want to run screaming out of the theatre (and I usually enjoy Richard Curtis flicks). The episode I like most is the last one, by Alexander Payne, in which a middle-aged American postal worker speaking French with a midwestern accent sums up the weird combination of joy and sadness that seizes visitors to Paris. It makes up for the cuteness that afflicts the rest of the movie. Paris is many things, some of them infuriating, but it is not cute.
The most unbelievable episode is the one in which an estranged couple have a drink at a bistro and Gerard Depardieu as the maitre d’ tells them it’s on the house. Ha! A freebie in a Paris restaurant? Has the apocalypse arrived?
Five minutes into the movie, at the end of the Montmartre episode, there’s a shot of my friend’s apartment building. It’s the only building on rue Cazotte, which is the shortest street in Paris, in case you’re in a trivia contest.
By the way there’s a new Woody Allen impressionist on the screen: Julie Delpy. 2 Days In Paris, which she wrote, directed, sang the theme of, and stars in with her ex-boyfriend Adam Goldberg, her parents, and probably her cat, is like Annie Hall with Delpy playing both Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. It’s lovely and hilarious, though it ends rather abruptly. Noel and I both found Adam Goldberg hot all of a sudden. One thing I know about relationships among the hyperverbal: talking never resolves anything, it’s just more ammunition.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
November 20th, 2008 at 21:07
Finally, I am in your blog. I have been an avid reader since your Today days. I listened to your radio show ( I forgot the station) airing every Monday 9-10. I was then reviewing for the bar but I would dial your number and throw in questions to your guests. I remember you guested Peque and I asked him about the similarities between Skorpio Nights and In the Realm of the Senses. I don’t know if I can attribute my passing the bar exam to my listening to your program. My God, it is more than 13 years ago. Thirteen years of reading books you recommended, watching movies you commented on and so on. And yes, thirteen years as a bungling lawyer because you got me. I am so surprised, upon discovering and reading your blogs just recently, that you had been to places in Paris which I happened to visit and like. B. Lipp, Cafe Flore, Deux Maggots. I stayed in St. Germain for nine days. Anyway, I watched this Julie Delpy movie and I am not quite impressed.