Given my quiet, out-of-the-way type of life, it’s hardly unlikely that I’d be totally unaware of a fantastic French movie that stars just about everybody — Romain Duris, Juliette Binoche, Fabrice Lucchini, François Cluzet, Albert du Pontel, and — one of the two female stars of Inglourious Basterds (shown below), Mélanie Laurent. I’m sure that Ms NOLA will tell me tomorrow morning that she has known about Paris for ages. I’ll learn that it was shown to a select crowd at Bryant Park one evening in July.

Well, just let them mock me. The simple fact is that I came home from Quentin Tarantino’s movie last week and headed straight to the computer, on which I ordered Cédric Klapisch’s latest film in a trice, from Amazonne. In the old days — but never mind the old days. In the new days, I received the package, as a matter of course, within the week. Voilà!

Paris is a great treat. Its story seems to reminisce at least three or four recent French hits: Paris je t’aime, Fauteuils d’orchestre, Le temps qui reste, and Fin d’Août, début Septembre (the last of which is not quite so recent). It really belongs to Ms Binoche, who deserves to have a photograph posted here. But it wouldn’t be a flattering photograph, because the style of the movie dictates that the actress look her age. She’s still gorgeous, of course, but not gorgeous in the way that Ms Laurent is gorgeous. Not any more. Ms Laurent, for her part, promises never to look a day older — in the same way that Catherine Deneuve has never looked a day older (only a day better).

Maybe this is cheating, but at the end, I was only too happy to bear in mind that Mr Duris, who plays a straight dancer with a bad heart, is himself undoubtedly in the pink, and set to make dozens more movies. Even if IMDb lists only three. 

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
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