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Clarence Tsui

Starring: Natalie Portman,  Gena Rowlands,  Miranda Richardson,  Steve Buscemi

Directors: Gerard Depardieu,  Tom Tykwer,  Alexander Payne,  Gurinder Chadha  and 14 other filmmakers

Category: IIA (French, English, Putonghua)

For a film that intends to debunk the picture-postcard perceptions  of Paris, having a title that pronounces love and yearning is surely misleading. And  the film's tagline, describing  it as a collection

of 'neighbourhood romances', adds to the confusion. Which is a shame, since Paris, Je T'aime is anything but a rose-tinted homage to the city.

The 18 five-minute pieces, each zeroing in on a story on one of the city's arrondissements, reveals Parisian life in a variety of guises that stray far from the path well-trodden by package-tour visitors.

Those familiar with the social and political unrest bubbling beneath the city's glossy veneer could justifiably point out that the film still presents Paris with too saccharine a view. The exceptions are Oliver Schmitz's  Place des Fetes (which  touches on the pains of the inner-city's underclass through a love story between a stabbed black cleaner and an ambulance worker), Gurinder Chadha's  Quais de Seine (an account of intercultural understanding between a white teenager and a hijab-wearing Muslim girl) and Walter Salles' Loin du 16e (with Catalina Sandino Moreno,  playing a nanny from a working-class neighbourhood, navigating the city's daycare centres - where she dropped off her baby - to babysit a rich family's child).

For its deficiencies, Paris, Je T'aime more than makes up with a few gems that subvert common cinematic themes. Two took the cliched topic of Americans in Paris and conjured magic with it.

Joel and Ethan Coen's   Tuileries sees Steve Buscemi's  luckless traveller being subjected to an array of bizarre abuse, but Alexander Payne outshines that with 14e Arrondissement, a simple, melancholic piece about a middle-aged woman from middle America (Margo Martindale)  criss-crossing the city's tourist spots, her deadpan voiceover evoking awe and sadness without even a change of tone.

A few chronicle relationship breakdowns, from talky dramas such as Gerard Depardieu's Quartier Latin (Gena Rowlands - who wrote the piece - and Ben Gazarra  meeting for one last time before their divorce) to Isabel Coizet's  moving tale of love unto death (Bastille, with Sergio Castellitto  playing a prodigal husband who nurses his cancer-stricken wife, played by Miranda Richardson,  through her last days). Tom Tykwer  returns to his dazzling, hectic visual style with Faubourg Saint-Denis (a fast-forward through a relationship between Melchior Beslon's  blind student and Natalie Portman's  aspiring actress), while Alfonso Cuaron  proves his worth in Parc Monceau with a one-take walk along a street between Nick Nolte  and Ludivine Sagnier  - a piece that begins seemingly as a clandestine love affair before emerging into an  emotional clearing in unexpected territory.

The collection has its duds. Vincenzo Natali's  vampire horror misses the point altogether, while Christopher Doyle's Porte de Choisy is an incoherent  piece of Asian exotica  - but the hits far outweigh the misses. Paris tourism officials must be pleased.

Paris, Je T'aime opens today



Paris, Je T'aime