Pretty Good

Absolutely Brilliant!

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Journey to Paris. Watch the sun rise from the steps of the Sacre Couer. Have your midday meal along the Champ Elysee before climbing atop the Arc de Triomphe less than 50 paces away. Catch the last lift up to the top of the Tour Eiffel that evening and reflect on where you've been. If you're like me, contemplative and curious, it is hard not to go from one place to another, gazing back at where you've been (from the highest point of any of these sites, the other two are visible), contemplating the people you've seen in passing, wondering who they are or what their lives entail. Paris, the film, is reminiscent of watching my home videos of my last trip to the City of Lights and focusing on the strangers in the background, strangers I will never meet or see again, yet forever they are captured on my camera. Although the synopsis of this film focuses on the Juliette Binoche character, this is really an ensemble piece, like Altman's Nashville or Short Cuts, or the first two-thirds of P. T. Anderson's Magnolia (which degenerates to fantasy in its final third). Unlike those well-made American films, however, Paris is populated with characters whose intersecting lives feel less than forced. Most of the connections are no more clearcut than the connection you have with the woman on the street for whom you held open a door. And yet, each life is quietly beautiful in its own right, subtle and often unresolved. The film's final image will not so much take your breath away as inspire you to look out your own window, be still, and look for the beauty of your own passing moments.

I din't love it, but I liked it for sure. Typical French movie showing no exceptional events, just ordinary lives, a lot of ordinary lives to which you finally get attached. Three characters in different scenes, speaking of the fact that they hadn't had sex or had been single for a long time: "During Middle-Age. I will need to check my dick with carbon 14 to be sure"; "I think even my cat would like to dump me"; "My legs aren't waxed..." "...Don't worry, at this stage I can't care". This summarizes all the topic: ordinary lives are lonely, all lives are lonely. At last a so realistic ignorant racist baker wonderfully played by Karine Viard: the France I hate, but who exists whatever I think and want; just wanted to slap her.

Pierre, a dancer with a potentially fatal heart disease watches Paris from the balcony of his Apartment.Love letter to Paris is a fantastic looking film (add it to my list of films to have playing on large screen TV's instead of paintings) that didn't connect to me emotionally. Its too scattered a film with lots of people and characters and moments as life in the city goes on. It looks good but by a half an hour or so I was wondering why I was watching when the people didn't interest me as much as the eye candy. Its not bad, and I'm sure had I ever gone to Paris I would have loved it, but as it is too much candy and not enough substance.

Many parallel stories here; many of them taking place under the eyes of this young dancer with a heart disease, who watches them from his balcony.He's jealous of these lives and communicates with them mostly through his sister, who after all perhaps is the only real character he knows. She's living, while others perform a kind of theater, from the racist lady in the baker's shop to the professor who tries to have a ridiculous affair with one of his students.The script functions well sometimes and less well other times. A movie to watch or just let go.