MOVIE REVIEW: "Paris Je T'aime

Paris is my favorite city in the world. I've been there, I guess, four or five times. I always arrive in the heart of Paris by cab, staying in the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank. As soon as I step out of the cab and onto a Latin Quarter street, a wave of freedom and a sense of exhilaration sweeps over me. I don't speak French ... well, enough to order my favorite coffee and a croissant in the mornings ... but nothing more. Yet I feel completely at home in Paris, at ease, in a place where I belong.

I thought about all those feelings I have about Paris watching Alexander Payne's magnificent "14eme Arrondissement," the last of 18 five-minute stories that make up the anthology "Paris Je T'aime." In it, a Denver postwoman (Margo Martindale) alone in Paris on vacation, arrives at the same sort of ephiphany that shapes my opinion of the city while she reflects on her life up to that moment. It is funny. It is real. It is bittersweet. All the elements that made Payne's "Sideways" the best film of 2004 and arguably the best film of this still infant century.

Twenty international filmmakers directed the 18 short stories that comprise "Paris Je T'aime." Each of the stories is named after a different Paris neighborhood, and, yes, there is a fine one called "Quartier Latin," directed by Frederic Auburtin and Gerard Depardieu in which Ben Gazzara and Gena Rowlands amusingly snipe at one another over the circumstances of their impending divorce. Of course, not all of the segments reach the level of Payne's contribution, but many come awfully close. Among my other favorites were Joel and Ethan Coen's "Tuileries" in which another American tourist (Steve Buscemi) fails to heed the warning in his guidebook that advises him not to make eye contact with lovers in a Metro station, even if they are on the other side of the tracks. (Perhaps I liked this one because I always seem to run into unabashed lovers across the tracks from me at Paris Metro stations).

I was also drawn to "Loin du 16eme" by Walter Salles in which Catalina Sandino Moreno ("Maria Full of Grace") portrays a recent immigrant who, before rushing to work, leaves her baby in a nursery, soothing it with a lullaby. When she gets to her job as a nanny for a wealthy family living on the other side of Paris, she winds up singing that same lullaby to the infant in her care.

I also marveled at "Bastille" by Spain's Isabel Coixet in which an adulterous husband (Sergio Castellito) arranges to meet his wife (Miranda Richardson) at a cafe to tell her he's leaving her for his mistress only to learn his wife is dying of lukemia.

Not all the stories work as well. Wes Craven's portrait of a engaged couple who get into a fight at Oliver Wilde's gravesight only to reconcile with the help of Wilde's ghost did nothing for me. And Vincenzo Natali's take on vampire love, "Quartier de la Madeleine," starring Elijah Wood is goofy to a point where it knocks the film off its delicate balance momentarily.

Could this movie have been made in any city other than Paris? I can't think of one, but then I have not traveled to all the major cities of Europe so I can't say for sure. But Paris, with its distinctive neighborhoods, its disparate citizenry and its reputation for embracing love in all its forms is the ideal setting. Being my favorite city doesn't hurt either.

GRADE: B