Dans Paris.

Christophe Honoré's Dans Paris is "a highly polished, assured film that manages to sustain a series of jaunty aesthetic risks that never obscure the narrative's core of sadness and melancholy," writes Jeff Reichert at indieWIRE. "The director's playful daring is often remarkable, as is the ease with which he moves his film along. Also, the performances of his small ensemble are generally without reproach. But still, somehow, the end of Dans Paris left me with nagging doubts about just how genuine Honore's project actually is."

"Honoré at times succeeds in fleshing out the complicated relationships among parents and children (including a mother played by Marie-France Pisier), but his tributes to New Wavish whimsy (Jonathan and a young lover's Jules et Jim-style romantic frolic, a needless Godardian direct-address narration) grow increasingly tired," writes Michael Joshua Rowin in the L Magazine. "One can discern, however, an intelligence and passion for life from the director who brought us the terrible Bataille-adaptation Ma Mère, so let's applaud Dans Paris as an improvement while keeping an eye on its uncategorizable creator."

Updated through 8/11.

Earlier: Robert Horton in Film Comment.

"Christophe Honoré's Dans Paris is both a floppy, joyful tribute to the French New Wave and an inspired retelling of Franny and Zooey, echoing Salinger's pair of novellas cannily and effortlessly," writes Julia Wallace in the Voice. "Unlike most other movies inspired by Salinger - The Royal Tenenbaums, Igby Goes Down - Dans Paris is set in Paris (well, duh), and so instead of trading on a superficial vision of Life in Quirky Old New York, Honoré is perhaps freer to dig into the source material. What he comes up with is a belief in the transcendence of sibling relationships."

"Cineastes will delight in checking off the allusions, but Honoré never lets his obvious admiration for the New Wave masters get in the way of his characters," writes Jürgen Fauth. "The quotations and references could easily have been empty gestures, but here, they provide packaging for a love story wrapped inside a moving family drama."

Update, 8/8: "The fourth chapter in Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series, Bed and Board is about marriage and mistakes, and that hazardous stretch separating adolescence from adulthood," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "In some respects, it is about the end of an era - for Truffaut, for the New Wave and its admirers - though it also appears to have served as a point of creative departure for Mr Honoré, as a new beginning, not an end."

Updates, 8/9: "It was difficult to figure out why the charm and inventiveness of the city life comedy Dans Paris... was ultimately unsatisfying - until one crucial scene," writes Armond White in the New York Press. "Twentysomething Jonathan (Louis Garrel) pauses in his womanizing spree on the streets of Paris to stare - transfixed - at two movie posters. He faces an illuminated curbside kiosk advertising Gus Van Sant's Last Days and David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. These films are not classic expressions of contemporary experience to go with the whimsy of Dans Paris; they're nihilistic resignations, celebrating American corruption and the meaninglessness of life. Through this homage, Christophe Honoré reveals a susceptibility to cynicism that prevents Dans Paris from fulfilling its joyful promise."

"Like his higher-profile countryman François Ozon (Swimming Pool, 5x2), who's about the same age, Honoré is figuring out how to make new films in what look like the sunset years of French movie history," writes Andrew O'Hehir in Salon. "It's possible that Honoré is still finding his way toward a mature style, and it's also possible that what you see in Dans Paris is what you get: a wistful, wispy tale about a group of wounded men trying to heal themselves, gamed up with a certain amount of self-referential artistry and genuine intellectual daring. I'll take it."

"It is a possibility that that one of the reasons Dans Paris does not quite work, does not quite connect excellent, deeply felt performances by [Romain] Duris, [Joana] Preiss and [Guy] Marchand, with the story at hand for a satisfactory engagement of the emotional material, is essentially a formal one," suggests Daniel Kasman.

Updates, 8/10: "Romain Duris is the real talent here; his Paul is a laconic layabout, on twenty-four-hour bedrest in his father's tiny flat following a bitter breakup, but even his weariness burns with intensity," writes Akiva Gottlieb at Nerve.

"As reckless as love itself, the movie has its ups and downs, but ultimately, you can't help but be touched by it," writes Paul Schrodt in Slant.

Update, 8/11: "Besides the restless style, Dans Paris is remarkable for being more about familial bonds than French cinema tends to be," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club.

Posted by dwhudson at August 6, 2007 5:49 AM