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In Paris

In Paris (2006)

October. 04,2006
|
6.3
| Drama Comedy

Paul, depressed from his recent break-up with Anna, returns home to Paris and moves back in with his divorced father and amorous younger brother, Jonathan. While his carefree sibling and doting father try in vain to cheer him up, a visit from his mother seems to be the only thing that brings him joy. When Paul is then left in the house to brood and talk to one of his brother's girlfriends, he begins to realize that while things haven't gone according to plan, one can always find something to live for.

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Reviews

Stometer
2006/10/04

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

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Listonixio
2006/10/05

Fresh and Exciting

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Humaira Grant
2006/10/06

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

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Hayden Kane
2006/10/07

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

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Niv_Savariego
2006/10/08

A very nice and touching film by Honoré, its resonances with the works of Truffaut, Eustache, Garrell, are obvious and magnificent (the Garrell and Truffaut links are even physically enacted in the presence of young Louis, an updated version of Jean-Pierre Léaud, his godfather): Narcissism and suicide, narcissism as suicide, as well as its antidote. The Frame: A tableau of the rigorous impossibility of mutual caring and love which isn't, also and at the same time, an act of mutual destruction. And the Truffaut-Desplechin principle: each minute, five new ideas. The pattern: A man comes back to live in his father's house, where he meets his younger brother, himself in a previous stage. He has played with love and met his match, a woman more powerful than him, more narcissistic, one who managed to play with h i s love. He has come back shattered, back to his childhood house, watching his brother wrecking the lives of young women and identifying with his dead sister, a position he slowly moves into. But by now, his narcissism has become too strong to follow his sister's path, he cannot die (he cannot drown, he swims against his will), he can only move on forward - a flicker of hope - more than a Garrell movie would have ever offered us (and more than the story of the hero's father and mother, the previous generation, seem to offer us) - to a place where love may indeed be possible without one falling apart and a prey to the other in the process. Finally, a journey back in time, a new future - a young weak woman knocks on the door (the bunny meets a frightened, wiser, wolf), will that hope ever materialize?Recommended.

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lastliberal
2006/10/09

I liked Love Songs (Les Chansons d'amour); wasn't thrilled with My Mother (Ma mère); this film, also by writer/director Christophe Honoré, and based upon J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey fits in between the two.Paul (Romain Duris) is a real jerk. This may be a typical French male, but I have no sympathy for him. His girlfriend Anna (Joana Preiss) breaks up with him, and he returns to Paris to live with his father (Guy Marchand) and brother (Louis Garrel). He is in a deep depression over the breakup and makes life miserable for everyone. Everyone except his younger brother, who seems to enjoy his life and loves.While Paul sits home moping, Jonathan (Garrell) is heading to Bon Marche. It's a long journey as he has to stop frequently along the way to screws every woman (Héléna Noguerra, Judith El Zein, & Annabelle Hettmann) he meets. Along the journey, he keeps calling his brother to join him. No luck. he revels in his nasty mood.Marchand, as the father turns in the best performance of the film.

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Chad Shiira
2006/10/10

Paul(Romain Duris) can't live with or without Anna(Joana Preiss). Jonathan(Louis Garrel) broke the fourth wall in the opening moments of "Dans Paris" and announces that the movie won't have a narrator. He's not the main character; Paul is, according to Jonathan. The narrator is lying. Jonathan's the main character because "Dans Paris" is about narration. Like most films, "Dans Paris" will proceed with omniscient narration. Unlike most films, however, the audience isn't made aware of this given. There's a tacit agreement between the filmmaker and moviegoer that the film begins where the backstory leaves off. But Jonathan speaks directly to the camera, forcing the viewer out of his passive stance. Jonathan isn't Paul's big brother, but he is "big brother" in the Orwellian sense of the word. Jonathan is literally, the omniscient narrator."Dans Paris" breaks down its story into two sections: Paul with Anna, and Paul without Anna. This compartmentalization extends to the mode of narration. When Paul and Anna are together, "Dans Paris" records their relationship in a non-linear fashion. When they're apart, the story becomes more sequential in its telling. The first part is told in non-sequential order because Jonathan picks and chooses what interests him the most; not surprisingly, most of the scenes feature Anna in a state of undress. Personal hygiene, or the lack of personal hygiene, is a subject that Anna broaches when Paul leaves their bed to take a shower. Anna believes Paul is leading by example. Paul's decision to lather up, Anna thinks, is tied in to the hope that she'll follow suit. Accused of being rank in a passive-aggressive fashion, Anna flips her lid. Since it's unlikely that Paul would share this moment with Jonathan, the viewer is led to believe that the younger brother is a filmic interloper, the camera's eye in the flesh. When Jonathan bumps into an old flame, this ex-lover cites personal hygiene for their break-up. In other words, "Dans Paris" has echoes. If Jonathan "controls the vertical and the horizontal", he controls the story of his life that's being narrated. Three women in one day, hmmm. We see it. But we see what he wants us to see.A cursory glance at "Dans Paris" suggests that this neo-French New Waver is about a sad man who lost his girlfriend, but if you're attuned to the self-reflexive opening, you'll understand that it's really about narration.

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Chris Knipp
2006/10/11

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. 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.

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