Dans Paris

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"Dans Paris" ("Inside Paris") is a film that is maddeningly French in every way. I´ll leave it to you, Dear Reader, to decide if that is a compliment or not. I´m not sure if I can properly articulate what I mean. As the film´s opening act unfolds, I could just tell that this was going to be a very, very French film. Writer/Director Christophe Honorè cobbles together classic French themes of romance and existential malaise while using the cinematic language of many French New Wave masters. The first half feels like a frothy Godard-ian romp through the City of Lights, while the second half is a tortured, Eric Rohmer style look at a family coming to grips with their failed relationships. "Dans Paris" opens up on one particular morning upon that most French tradition, the ménage a trois. Two men and a woman are asleep in bed. However, "Dans Paris" is not a threesome film like "Band of Outsiders" or "Jules and Jim."

One of the two men is Louis Garrel who starred in Bernardo Bertolucci´s "The Dreamers," another love triangle story. Garrel plays Jonathan, a hedonistic, womanizing college student though we never see him go to campus once. Garrel also happens to bear quite the resemblance to Jean-Pierre Lèaud, the star of Francois Truffaut´s Antoine Doinel series that began with the seminal "The 400 Blows." Not surprising, both Jonathan and Antoine share the same youthful, free-spirited attitude. Jonathan awakens and walks to the balcony overlooking a snow-covered Paris, the Eiffel Tower towering in the background. Jonathan addresses the audience directly and even acknowledges the audacity behind breaking the fourth wall. He assures us that he´ll only be introducing the film and that he´ll shortly return to being an ordinary character in the rest of the picture. Jonathan lets us know that this is his brother´s story.

Jonathan´s brother, Paul (Romain Duris), had previously moved into the countryside with his girlfriend, Anna (Joanna Preis). The relationship was anything but idyllic as the couple breaks up and Paul moves back into the apartment his brother shares with their father, Mirko (Guy Marchand). In a page out of Jacques Rivette´s playbook, Honorè unfurls a series of nonlinear scenes that depicts the tumultuous nature of Paul and Anna´s romance. Anna laments that there is no love in their relationship, just empty sex and a feeling of entrapment. In another scene, the pair are about to get amorous when Paul drops his trousers and sticks his crotch in her face. Needless to say, that ruins the mood. Shortly after, Anna begins dancing in the living room topless as Paul stares with underlying frustration and anger. It is up to interpretation whether these are flashbacks, flash forwards, or simply a dream.

Usurping his brother´s bedroom, Paul lays about, refusing to get up, eat, or groom himself. He just mopes in bed wearing nothing but briefs and an unbuttoned shirt, letting his beard grow scruffy. About the liveliest Paul gets is when he puts on "Cambodia" by 80´s pop icon Kim Wilde and mumbles along to the lyrics. Mirko doesn´t know what to do other than make chicken soup. He hopes Jonathan will reach out to his morose sibling, but the young man prefers to go out for a stroll. There, he meets a cute girl on a scooter and the two have sex at her place. Afterwards, Jonathan bumps into Alice (Alice Butaud), an ex-girlfriend who demands the 3000 Francs he owes her. Jonathan pours on the charm which leads into a peppy romantic montage of the two frolicking about in Paris. We see Jonathan and Alice, wearing blindfolds, grope for each other in a park, followed by a jump cut to the couple kissing each other. Frustrated with how things are turning out, Mirko is forced to call in his promiscuous ex-wife (Marie-France Pisier), to drop by and help out her boys. Despite the whole family crammed into this apartment for the holidays, there is a growing disconnect and ennui between its members.

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