Movie Log: Paris

Paris is one of those movies with several plotlines loosely related; in this case, the lives of a medium-sized cast of Parisians are linked by their connections to social worker Elise (Juliette Binoche) and her dancer brother Pierre (Romain Duris).

Pierre is ill with a not-clearly-specified heart ailment; he's waiting for the word to go into a hospital for a transplant that will give him the best shot at a continued life. (It's not a great shot, but it's the best he has.) So he has the male version of Ali MacGraw's Disease, in that he never looks sick, but is apparently slower and less active than he was in the past.

Elise moves in with Pierre, bringing her young children along. And Paris wanders around the City of Light from that starting point, bumping into the workers in a patisserie, a middle-aged professor who finds himself first narrating a documentary and then lusting after a student, several fish- and flower-sellers at the local market, a young man from Cameroon on his way to Paris, and several others.

This isn't a movie with a central plot: it's about the ways various people intersect and how their various lives are lived. But it's set in one of the most attractive, enticing cities in the world and populated with a large cast of believable, interesting people. Pierre's Gallic depression can be a bit much, but Binoche is lovely and wonderful, as are several of the other characters. (Fabrice Luchini, as that professor, is definitely not lovely, and not precisely wonderful, but he's a joy to watch.)

Unless you speak French, Paris is a movie that has to be read, which does add an extra level of effort. But it's worth it for anyone who likes stories about people just living their lives and seeing what happens next.
----------------
Listening to: Immaculate Machine - Nothing Ever Happens
via FoxyTunes