Paris in the UK.

"There was a wince-inducing portmanteau comedy recently released in this country called Paris Je T'Aime, and that title was very clearly ordering us to go into a Jane Birkin-style breathy rapture at the French capital," writes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, reviewing Cédric Klapisch's Paris. "Something of the same complacency is detectable here. The movie has French commercial cinema's tendency to veer into the over-sweetened and picturesque, a kind of nostalgia for an idealised present."

"Perhaps the film's key problem is the feeling that Klapisch lets his ambition obstruct his storytelling," suggests Tom Huddleston in Time Out. "It feels like the idea of the movie - an Altmanesque ensemble piece for a French audience - came first, with the director slotting his characters in afterwards like puzzle pieces, rather than working from a strong central premise and allowing the narrative to grow organically."

"As a former dancer (Romain Duris) re-evaluates his life under sentence of a possibly fatal heart condition, his sister (Juliette Binoche) and her kids move into his flat to keep him company," explains the Independent's Anthony Quinn (3 out of 5 stars). "Meanwhile, a metropolitan fresco unfurls, encompassing market stallholders, social workers, patissiers, vagrants, a Cameroonian immigrant and, in one sad sequence of vignettes, a history professor (Fabrice Luchini) who loses his head and heart to a student young enough to be his daughter."

"Klapisch knows how to do this sort of thing - even if, on this occasion, his well over two-hours-long film has its longueurs," writes the Evening Standard's Derek Malcolm.

"Tourist-trap cinema," harrumphs Mike McCahill in the Telegraph.

Posted by dwhudson at July 25, 2008 6:13 AM