|
"20th Arrondissement"
directed by Wes Craven - starring Rufus and Emily Mortimer
"The wonderful actors of my segment, Emily Mortimer
and Rufus Sewell in front of Oscar Wilde's gravesite."
Wes Craven
Wes Craven Interview from About.com
http://horror.about.com/od/movierelated/a/int_06craven_2.htm
Contains spoilers!
Q: So, what was that little
French project that you were alluding to? Are you allowed to say?
Wes Craven: Absolutely. Let me see, ah, the
producers are Vonoly and Dauker (sp) and those guys who I greatly admire. They contacted
my office and said, "We're making a film called Paris, je t'aime, which is Paris I
Love You, and since there's twenty districts, each story takes place in one of them. They
kind of spiral out from central Paris, where the Arc De Triumph is, into the outskirts of
Paris. Those twenty districts make up the city of Paris. So they're making a film where we
have twenty filmmakers write anything they want to write so long as it's about Paris and
love. And it has to be set in the district that they give you. And I got the twentieth
district, which has the big cemetery. I think Napoleon's there, and Jim Morrison's there.
Q: I've been there.
Wes Craven: Have you! Fabulous! So um, "Would
you like to do it?" And I said, "Absolutely!" So um we wedged it in the
press tour for Red-Eye, and I think between Paris and London or something like that, or
between London and Berlin, we dropped into Paris for an afternoon and did our location
scouts and came back like a month later and did our preproduction which was like ten days,
and then had I think two days to shoot it.
And ah, it turned out to be a really beautiful location
shoot. It's kind of a little romantic comedy moment with Rufus Sewell and Emily Mortimer.
I just loved that, it's really magical. Turned out it's one of those things like,
"Holy, Shit! That's really good!" So ah, let's see. Alex Underpain was in the
film as Oscar Wilde's ghost and then I was in one of the other director's films playing a
corpse that was being attacked by a vampire.
Q: So are you allowed to shoot in that cemetery with
Oscar Wilde's beautiful monument in the background?
Wes Craven: Yeah. It's set right there.
Q: That's beautiful. I love that Art Deco look.
What's your story actually about?
Wes Craven: It's about a woman who wants to visit
the monument and they're on a very quick holiday and her husband doesn't want to be
bothered and he thinks it's all stupid. She almost decides not to enter. In fact at one
point she decides not to enter because he's just, he cannot make her laugh and he's just
such a grump, you know. And his whole thing is "Life is serious. I've never made
anyone laugh in my life. Why would I want to do that?" And she says well than fine
the marriage is off.
She takes off, and he runs after her shouting something at
her and trips and just does a head slap right into that monument. He wakes up with stars
spinning around his head and there's this very dapper gentleman on the bench just looking
at him and he says "I'm all right, I'm all right" and he says "No, you're
not all right. If you let her go you'll die. And the death of the heart is the emptiest
hell there is." And Rufus just gets it and he runs after her and catches her just as
she's about to leave. He overwhelms her with kisses unlike any he's ever given her and
then he says two very clever things. The first thing he says is "I'm so sorry. I'm so
sorry, I never meant to hurt you. Friends stab you in front." , which is one of
Wilde's great lines. And then he says something else, "How could you ever love
someone who would treat you like an ordinary human being?" It's just those, my two
favorite quotes of his.
They embrace and he looks over his shoulder, and the man
who talked to him gives him a little wave and just disappears. So he turns to her and he
says, "Let's go back to our hotel and I'll make you laugh." So he has his own
witticism at the end of that. He self effaces himself and they go on. So it's just this
little pearl, you know? It's something that after thirty years in the business you get a
chance to do. Something outside of the genre and it's funny and gentle.
Q: Is this going to be a theatrical release of all
these twenty little movies in one?
Wes Craven: Yes, that is the concept. I'm glad it's
not me that has to figure out how to make that work. They were shooting they said what
they call 'interstitchals' which were connective tissue that weave it all together
somehow. They're trying to have it ready for Cannes. Whether they will or not, I don't
know. But that's the hope.
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/
Cannes Film Festival
Posted 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
Review 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
|
|