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"Père Lachaise"
directed by Wes Craven - starring Rufus and Emily Mortimer  
 
Filmmaker Wes Craven Discusses the Film
"Paris, je t'aime"
From Rebecca Murray - Hollywood Movies
Paris,
je t'aime is a collection of 18 shorts inspired by different districts in Paris.
Wes Craven supplies Père-Lachaise, one of the five minute segments which play out
like a love letter to the City of Lights. Befitting a story from Craven, his short
involves one of the world's most famous cemeteries and a visit from the beyond by Oscar
Wilde (played by filmmaker Alexander Payne).
On Getting Involved in Paris, je t'aime:
Craven says the project came to him from out of the blue. “I can’t even
remember, I think it was an e-mail, ‘We’re interested in you participating in
this and here’s what we’re up to. You’ll be shooting in Paris…’
It was like by the time that word came by, I said, ‘Okay, I’m
there................
Casting Filmmaker Alexander Payne as Oscar Wilde:
“You know, I kind of discovered in the course of just being around the offices of
that place that people had been doing cameos in each other’s films. And then shortly
after that, I got a call from Alexander Payne who I’d never met and said, ‘How
are you doing? I like your films. I hear you have a role for Oscar Wilde you haven’t
filled yet and I’d love to do it. What do you think?’ I said, ‘Let’s
talk.’ So he came over and he looked like yeah, that could be Wilde. It’s not
quite the famous Ambrose Bierce or whoever did those drawings of him, but he has an
elegance and a sort of charisma. He said, ‘You can re-voice me. You’ll have to
re-voice me.’ I said, ‘Okay,’ and it was as informal as that. He came down,
got wardrobe, I think, in an hour, and showed up a couple days later when we were shooting
and pulled it off beautifully.”
Finding the Rest of His Père-Lachaise Cast:
“I just went after certain actors,” said Craven. “Emily [Mortimer] I’d
worked with before. We needed to do it very quickly so I just called her up and basically
she said, ‘Okay, great.’ Rufus [Sewell] was - we kind of had
the strictures we couldn’t bring people from the United States. We didn’t have
time and there wasn’t a budget for it. They kind of needed to come from Europe so I
just said, ‘Who are the leading men that are around that are available?’ His
name was mentioned. I had seen some of his work and really liked it and said, ‘Let’s
take a chance with him.’ He was probably thinking the same thing about me.”
Click on the link below for the complete article:
http://movies.about.com/od/parisjetaime/a/pariswc042307.htm
thanks, Rai!!!
"The wonderful actors of my segment, Emily Mortimer
and Rufus Sewell in front of Oscar Wilde's gravesite."
Wes Craven
Late-breaking news: Wes has Just finished filming a segment
for a film called PARIS, JE T'AIME. That's "Paris, I Love You" in French, by the
way. Paris has twenty districts, so the concept of the film (produced by the makers of
AMELIE and many other great films) was to invite 20 directors from around the world to
shoot 20 five-minute-long shorts, each set in a particular district. They'll all be woven
into a feature-length film that will screen in Cannes next year. My short was shot in the
vast and world-famous Pere Lachaise Cemetery, which is in the 20th Arrondissement
(district) in Paris. It's set around the grave of Oscar Wilde, who is among the dozens of
famous people who are buried there (including Jim Morrison).http://www.wescraven.com/blog/
Beyond the berets,
it's love, drugs and vampires
Brisbane Times
Gary Maddox
April 14, 2007
........The legendary horror director Wes Craven, who
made A Nightmare on Elm Street and the Scream movies, considers Paris
one of his favourite cities. He was delighted the 20th arrondissement was still available
for filming when he was approached. After all, that's the location of the famous Pere
Lachaise cemetery.
Craven decided to go against type with a romantic comedy
about a woman, played by Emily Mortimer, who decides impulsively in front of Oscar Wilde's
tomb against marrying her fiance, Rufus Sewell. "Nobody has ever
given me the chance to do a romantic comedy before this," Craven says.
In the same collaborative spirit that had Craven appear as
an extra in Natali's vampire film in the Quartier de la Madeleine, he cast fellow director
Alexander Payne as Wilde. It was a whirlwind project. "I wrote it in two hours in
Paris during a press tour," Craven says. "We had a few days of pre-production,
two days of shooting, three days of post[-production], then I went back on my press
tour."
Having once decided against asking a woman to marry him
during a cruise on the Seine, Craven says the film became surprisingly personal. It was
also more complicated than expected. "I actually wrote three separate scripts,"
he says. "The first one was about Jim Morrison's grave. Then we found out there was
no way to get the clearance from the Jim Morrison estate to use his grave or his name.
"So I quickly wrote one for Edith Piaf. By that time,
I'd arrived in Paris and they found out we couldn't use her name or likeness either. So I
said, 'Is Oscar Wilde in the public domain?' They said yes. So I said, 'Fine, I'll be
right back'."
He found Wilde's grave a remarkable place. "It's
covered in kisses. The genitals of the griffin or whatever it is have been knocked off.
There were little notes and candles all over it. You felt there was incredible energy -
happy devotion from all over the world."
The success of Paris, Je T'aime has led to
suggestions of similar films about New York and Tokyo. "If they said it was 'I Love
Sydney', I'd do it," Craven says.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/film/beyond-the-berets-its-love-drugs-and-vampires/2007/04/12/1175971244434.html?page=2
Cannes Film Festival
May 19th 2006 3:28PM
Review by James Rocchi
Beginning with vistas of Paris at dawn as a pa-rum-pum-pah samba song shimmies on the
soundtrack, Paris Je T'Aime times its opening credits so that the title comes up
as the Eiffel Tower is showered with a cascade of fireworks and the strings kick in during
the music. It's a fair warning: If you want sociology or cultural critique, go somewhere
else, friend. Featuring 18 segments by 18 separate directors, Paris Je T'Aime
isn't just a boon to any film writer who gets paid by the word; it's also a charming
document of each director's love affair with Paris. And, like a real love affair, it's not
afraid to look at complexities and compromises, to tackle tough challenges in the hope of
reaping great rewards.
Perhaps the nicest thing about Paris Je T'Aime is how the 2-hour running time
means that each director has to work on the run; and, if you don't like a segment, you
simply have to wait a short while for something else to come along. Many films offer us a
feast; Paris Je T'Aime is more like a tasting menu, with a series of chefs --
some known, some not -- offering a small serving of romance or comedy or pathos or all
three and then clearing the way for another cook. Every segment revolves around love --
but love, of course, is not always happy. And there is some sociology afoot in Paris
Je T'Aime -- whether it's Catalina Sandino Moreno's portrait of a working-class nanny
or glimpses of the interactions and negotiations that make up Parisian life.
Each segment is named for a neighborhood or landmark in Paris, and there are standout
segments: The opening segment "Monmartre," by writer-director-star Bruno
Podalydes, begins as a man's negotiation with the parking battlefields of France throws
him into a contemplative reverie about his life and fate -- interrupted by a woman
(Florence Mueller) who collapses in the street next to his car. Podalydes has a nice sense
of comedic timing as an actor and director, and the segment sets the tone for the stories
of urban love and urban life that follow. Gurinder Chadha manages to combine a story
of youthful flirtatiousness with an examination of one of France's most controversial
social issues -- the wearing of the hijab by Muslim immigrants and their children -- and
uses it to look at peace, love and understanding with real charm and grace.
Wes Craven steps away from his usual scary-film style to show two quarrelling lovers
(Rufus Sewell and Emily Mortimer) in a famed Paris Cemetery, and one of Craven's fellow
directors makes an unexpectedly deft cameo as famous dead resident Oscar Wilde. Alexander
Paybe demonstrates that the capacity for sympathy and humanity he honed in Sideways was
no fluke with a vignette about an American woman (Margo Martindale) traveling in Paris; it
seems to condescend at first, but then you're left touched by just how real and sincere
Payne's segment really is. And the Coen Brothers give us some of their loosest, funniest,
most assured work in years with a wordless, hapless Steve Buscemi playing another tourist
who has a misadventure on the underground.
There are other vignettes, but with everyone from Isabel Coixet to Christopher Doyle, Tom
Tykwer to Gerard Depardieu offering a small slice of love and life in Paris, there's a
little something here for every film fan. Paris Je T'Aime may be small and slight
(and already embroiled in a lawsuit between two of it's producers), but it's a lovely,
romantic treat whose episodic, ephemeral nature doesn't detract from its exuberant,
elegant charm.
Thanks, Rai!
May 17, 2006
By LISA NESSELSON
Twenty different directors
tackle 18 of Paris' most distinctive neighborhoods with close to 20-20 artistic vision in
"Paris je t'aime." Omnibus -- with the City of Lights as its milieu and love as
its raison d'etre -- is uneven but quite pleasant as a two-hour experience that
acknowledges the idealized Paris people carry in their heads while wisely veering off the
beaten track. International roster of helmers, most of them working with local techies,
assures warranted curiosity among the film-savvy -- the lure of Paris itself should do the
rest. Pic opens in Gaul June 21 following its Un Certain Regard preem at Cannes.
PERE-LACHAISE
Directed, written by Wes Craven.
......Wes Craven's "Pere-Lachaise." Although
viewers might expect something sinister, Emily Mortimer and Rufus Sewell inhabit a sweetly
spirited look at how the dead can goose the living.
Picture postcard overviews
establish the ambient beauty quotient of Paris. They are followed by capsule views in a
tic-tac-toe split screen format.
Fears that the venture might be a series of glorified ads quickly dissipate as good actors
portraying (mostly) real people are given the figurative floor. Each seg, set in one of
the neighborhoods within the city's official administrative districts, is pinpointed with
the name of the vicinity and the corresponding director superimposed over an establishing
shot.
Each seg was written or co-written by its helmer, except
"Quartier Latin," which was penned by Gena Rowlands but co-helmed by Gerard
Depardieu and Frederic Auburtin. Most are in French, with three in English and a few a
mixture of the two languages.
Some installments boast definite punchlines, while others
capture a mood or offer up an open-ended slice of life.
The 18 episodes have been strung together in an order that
feels right, balanced about as well as can be hoped for with no real narrative cement
except the umbrella brief to make a five minute love story in the assigned quarter.
With a light touch and an eye for the glories of a sunny
day, Gurinder Chadha offers a pitch-perfect commentary on the idiocy of religious and
racial stereotyping in "Quais de Seine." Steve Buscemi's majestic
schleppiness anchors Joel and Ethan Coen's comic slam dunk in "Tuileries,"
set in the Metro station of that name.
On the infinitely more poignant front, Walter Salles and
Daniela Thomas paint a wrenching portrait of the gulf between a poor immigrant servant's
(Catalina Sandino Moreno) experience of motherhood and that of her employer in "Loin
du 16eme." "Bastille" is Isabelle Coixet's intensely bittersweet take
on a man (Sergio Castellitto) about to leave his wife (Miranda Richardson) for his
mistress (Leonor Watling).
The power of even the briefest of human interactions and
the fall-out of being in the wrong place at the wrong time are communicated with depth and
economy in "Place des Fetes" by Olivier Schmitz. Olivier Assayas' "Quartier
des Enfants Rouges" is like a revisiting of helmer's "Irma Vep" a decade
later, with a few notes borrowed from "Clean."
In "Tour Eiffel," Sylvain Chomet, the gifted
animator of "The Triplettes of Belleville" fame, lenses live actors for the
first time, imbuing them with much of the off-kilter humor that's his trademark.
"Cube" helmer Vicenzo Natali's ominously scored and dialogue-free vampire riff
"Quartier de la Madeleine" doesn't really jell despite an earnest perf by Elijah
Wood but proves an amusing lead-in to Wes Craven's "Pere-Lachaise."
Although viewers might expect something sinister, Emily Mortimer and Rufus Sewell inhabit
a sweetly spirited look at how the dead can goose the living.
A freshly beefed up Gaspard Ulliel delivers a frank and
yearning monologue to a printshop staffer (Elias McConnell) in Gus Van Sant's "Le
Marais." Lensing is more conventional than the dreamy-yet-controlled meanderings of
Van Sant's last few features. Blink and you'll miss Marianne Faithful.
Christopher Doyle's ambitious genre-melee, "Porte de
Choisy" is set in Chinatown but all over the map as Barbet Schroeder plays a hair
care products rep.
Alfonso Cuaron plays with sound, space and viewer
assumptions in a long tracking shot with a mild twist as his camera follows Nick Nolte and
Ludivine Sagnier in "Parc Monceau." Fanny Ardant and Bob Hoskins play a couple
unsure just how theatrical their sex lives should be in Richard LaGravanese's piquant if
uneven "Pigalle."
Weakest -- but still watchable -- entries are Bruno
Podalydes' harmlessly amusing "Montmartre"; Nobuhiro Suwa's overwrought look at
parental grief, "Place des Victoires" starring Juliette Binoche and Willem
Dafoe; and Tom Tykwer's "Faubourg Saint-Denis" which chronicles a sudden glitch
in the storybook romance between a blind French student of languages (Melchior Beslon) and
an American actress (Natalie Portman).
Rowlands and Ben Gazzara get excellent mileage out of a
cafe appointment with edgy yet affectionate sparring in "Quartier Latin."
Alexander Payne skillfully condenses the tone of his
feature work into the closing seg, "14th Arrondissement," in which Margo
Martindale shines as a middle-aged letter carrier from Denver narrating her solo trip to
Paris in French.
Interstitial shots of Paris and coda in which certain
characters cross paths don't add much and veer dangerously close to saccharine. But
project -- four years in the making --avoided most pitfalls and turned out better than
average.
Thanks, Rai!!
Plot Summary for
Paris, je t'aime (2006)
The Internet Movie Database
Paris, je t'aime is about the plurality of
cinema in one mythic location: Paris, the City of Love. Twenty filmmakers will bring their
own personal touch, underlining the wide variety of styles, genres, encounters and the
various atmospheres and lifestyles that prevail in the neighborhoods of Paris. Each
director has been given five minutes of freedom, and we, as producers, carry the
responsibility of weaving a single narrative unit out of those twenty moments. The 20
films will not appear in the order of the arrondissements, from one to twenty, but rather,
in a pertinent narrative order, initially unknown to the audience. They will be fused
together by transitional interstitial sequences, and also via the introduction and
epilogue sequences of the feature film. Each transition will begin with the last shot of
the previous film and will end with the first shot of the following film, and will have a
threefold function: 1) The first is to extend the enchantment and the emotion of the
previous segment, 2) The second is to prepare the audience for the surprise of the next
segment, and 3) The third is to provide a general, comfortable and cohesive atmosphere to
the feature film. The delightful and brief interludes of these transitions will enable the
viewer to slide from one world to the next, featuring a recurring and unexpected
character. This mysterious character is a witness to the Parisian life and helps create a
continuous narration. It appears both in and in-between the films. In addition to the
information these transitions will provide about the city and its people, their tone will
be intentionally light often referring to famous scenes easily attributed to the history
of Paris cinema. Similar specifications will be followed by the composer who will
supervise the musical fusion between the films and the transitions as he creates the
musical score of Paris, je t'aime. Considering the common theme of Paris and Love, the
fusion between the films and the transitions, the fast pace of a fluid and complete
storytelling, Paris, je t'aime will not be just another "anthology" picture. It
will be a unique collective feature film that will constitute a two-hour cinematographic
spectacle whose original structure will make for a dramatically different experience for
its global audience.
thanks, Rai
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