Paris Je T'aime

Tagline: Stories of love. From the city of love.

I saw this movie out of order you could say, since I saw New York, I Love You first. I enjoyed NY and was looking forward to seeing the predecessor. Paris Je T'aime is a collection of 20 different shorts that all center on the subject of love in the City of Love, Paris. Each short is from an acclaimed director, including Wes Crave, Coen brothers, Gus Van Sant, and Gerard Depardieu to name a few. Some of the notable actors in the film are Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gena Rowlands, Natalie Portman (who also stars and directs in New York), Willem Dafoe, Steve Buscemi, Elijah Wood, and Nick Nolte.

Plot: The stories are genuine and don't just deal with over the top shout at the top of a mountain movie love. They also deal with loss of love, destruction of love, acceptance of love, and so on. The shorts were all well written and there were a couple of nicely unique shorts, (i.e Elijah Wood's short and the son of the mime). Overall, I felt the movie capturing what it was trying to do and wasn't too flagarant.

Picture: This movie was tied together much better than New York, I Love You. Ths split screen editing in the beginning was a nice touch to bring the different stories together. Some of the clips were given full resolution at the end with a few tying in together. This helped to give is a movie feel instead of a documentary of 10 pieces. The filming was nice and props on the single continuous shot for Nick Nolte's piece.

Performance: Everyone does well in this movie and I was actually thouroughly entertained with the Natalie Portman short, I almost felt it could've been made into an entire movie. The movie was cast very well and all of the actors were able to play well off each other, with a notable example of Gena Rowland's short of the divorcing couple. She does a great job with that part.

I would recommend this to anyone who liked New York, I Love You, altough I bet most are not like me and probably saw this one first. I would also recommend to anyone who love Paris, as I think this probably has that feel to it. Its not a typical romance comedy, so don't go into this thinknig that. If you want a movie with a lot of stars and artistic liberty with storlyines which feed into another, then I would reommend this movie.