Christophe Honoré: Dans Paris

[Chris Knipp]

Christophe Honoré: Dans Paris

More about this surprising winner now showing in Paris when I can get to my notes. It is accessible, appealing, allusive, literate, and a virtual tour-de-force for Romain Duris as Paul, the depressed older brother who's just broken up with his girlfriend, and Louis Garrel as his younger brother Jonathan, who tries to cheer him up after he moves back to his dad (Guy Marchand's) Paris apartment just around Christmastime. Jonathan becomes a sort of reincarnation of Jean-Pierre Leaud for our time, as well as a bit of a clown, and the into-the-lens narrator, while the versatile Duris becomes a gloomy, hostile man who still harbors huge energy. And there are four good women's roles too, notably Marie-France Pisier as the mother.

No US distributor yet, perhaps partly due to the way the off-putting, self indulgent Ma Mère, which wasted Garrel and Isabelle Huppert and bombed in Berkeley, but it would be mad not to show it in US art houses. One of the top French critics calls it "the best French film of the year," and Liberation, Telerama, Les Inrockuptibles and Cahiers du Cinema, all influential voices here, had much praise and some serious analysis of it.

It its third week of Paris screenings.

[oscar jubis]

I trust your opinion more than that of Les Inrockuptibles, who gave Ma Mere four stars. Don't assume the film won't get distribution. Many French films get that long after they've opened in Paris. French films get more distribution than films from any other country where English is not the language spoken.

[Chris Knipp]

CHRISTOPHE HONORÉ: DANS PARIS (2006)

A manic-depressive dive back into the New Wave

Review by Chris Knipp

After the turn-off of his previous Ma Mère and the gloomy intensity of previous films, Christophe Honoré has produced a fourth feature that's economical and entertaining, a remarkable balance of moods that (as before) studies parental and sibling relationships, this time with elegant dialogue and amusing contrasts of scenes and characters and an evocation of the French New Wave that gives two of France's best and hottest young male film actors a chance for virtuoso performances.

Dark and light come in the form of the two brothers these actors play. One, Paul (Romain Duris), has broken up with his girlfriend (Joana Preiss) and, depressed after a series of disastrous scenes which we observe early on in back-and-forth jump-cut sequences that are intentionally confused in chronology, goes back to live with his caring father.

Though Paul's younger brother Jonathan (Louis Garrel), who's never left the paternal nest, tells us speaking into the camera in an early shot (which establishes the light and detached side of the film), that he's the narrator but only a lesser character in the story, he emerges also as an essential foil to Paul because of his success with the ladies and his larky attitude. He's as frolicsome as his brother is worrisomely dark-spirited and hopeless.

When not reading La Repubblica and watching Italian TV, Papà Mirko (Guy Marchand) does domestic things like make chicken soup and drag home a big Christmas tree he decorates alone.

Jonathan makes it with three girls in one day while trying to lure Paul shopping for presents at Monoprix. Dad summons his estranged wife and the boy's mother (Marie-France Pisier, of Jacques Rivette's 1974 Céline and Julie Go Boating, which this film evokes) to cheer up Paul too. And she succeeds: Paul's depression isn't seen one-dimensionally. Dad is amusingly cuddly, while Garrel's high spirits constantly contrast with Duris' glumness and relative inertia. But that inertia also has its sudden interruptions: he goes out early in the morning and jumps into the Seine, then returns wet and surprised at what he's done -- and at still being alive. Jonathan/Garrel is also clearly the Jean-Pierre Léaud of our days, and a bedrrom shot links him with Godard's Belmondo. (Garrel is well-suited as a reborn Sixties icon after starrring in his father Philippe's great 2005 evocation of '68, Regular Lovers as well as the earlier Bertolucci '68 piece The Dreamers, and his looks match the dash of Belmondo with the polish of Léaud. Duris has already shown his mercurial potential in a string of romantic comedies and his starring role in Jacques Audiard's dark, brilliant 2005 crime/art film, The Beat My Heart Skipped.

There's a lot of formally written and frenetically spoken French dialogue; Garrel is a master of the pout, snicker, and slurred one-liner; Duris emerges as the actor with more depth, while Garrel shows a new light, comedic side we haven't seen much of before. Marchand is appealing, and the movie has energy. Les Inrockuptibles, the influential and hip French review, calls this "The best French film of the year." Dans Paris is an actors', writer's, editor's tour de force that creates its own unique tragi-comic mood.

Paris, All Souls Day 2006.