Dans Paris (Inside Paris) Reviews and Ratings


  • jschartrand
    January 24, 2010
    jschartrand
    Du Honoré tout craché: scène chanté, déprime, amours, coquetteries et un style entièrement calqué sur les plus belles méthodes de la nouvelle vague. Si les interprétations sont dans le ton et plusieurs scènes d'une belle luminosité, on aimerait qu'il en soit autant pour la direct...( read more)ion photo, fade comme toujours.. Et ce son, on s'étire l'oreille pour comprendre.. Mais bon, ça demeure fort sympathique.
  • wwaising
    October 14, 2009
    wwaising
    Romain Duris + Louis Garrel. Christophe Honore. Paris. Interesting narrative & scenario.
  • jmlanlo
    October 19, 2008
    jmlanlo
    Très bel hommage à la nouvelle vague qui donne envie d'aimer encore plus la vie et le cinéma... un pur bonheur!
  • MandyDarko
    September 25, 2008
    MandyDarko
    Ronda alrededor del tema de la depresión y la familia como soporte. Buenas actuaciones, especialmente la de Romain Duris. Me encantaron las escenas donde canta.
  • EarthlyAlien
    August 10, 2008
    EarthlyAlien
    "I think we grossly underestimate our sorrows, in general."

    Almost every single review I've read so far of Dans Paris has described it at least once as a homage to the French New Wave of the 1960s transplanted to the present day. Although I don't fancy being repeti...( read more)tive, that really is the best way to describe this film - as an authentic anthem and tribute to filmmakers such as Truffaut, Godard, Melville or Resnais, and their respective films.

    Photobucket

    Writer-director Christophe Honoré's film is inspired by both his own family and his deep appreciation for French cinema. Dans Paris is a rarity of a film. Genuinely honest, unpretentious and delightful. Alternately sober and effervescent, heavy-going philosophizing or charmingly simple. It has a vivid emotional realism that is alternately funny and sad, and, at heart, inspirational. Every frame is gorgeously composed and it truly feels and looks and feels like a love letter to the City of Lights.

    Honoré reunites the male protagonists of his first and second features - Seventeen Times Cécile Cassard and My Mother, respectively - for his third, and by far best film. Romain Duris (L'Auberge espagnole, The Beat My Heart Skipped) plays Paul, the moody, depressed older brother to Louis Garrel's (The Dreamers, Regular Lovers) carefree hedonist Jonathan. If you add to those two already naturally talented young actors, and following its sincere homage to the French New Wave, veterans Guy Marchand and Marie-France Pisier as the brothers' divorced parents, you get Dans Paris' first quality: sublime, near-perfect acting.

    The film opens with three people in a bed (in a completely non-sexual way) on an early morning in a Parisian apartment; they are Jonathan, in the middle, one of his girlfriends, Alice (Alice Butaud) on one side and Paul on the other. He wakes up, tiptoes his way out of the bed onto the Eiffel Tower-view balcony and then addresses the audience, by looking directly into the camera. Garrel's affable Jonathan proposes to be a narrator in the film's story. Story that starts with Paul's recent life in the country and his failing relationship with his needy, unhappy girlfriend Anna (Joana Preiss). Christmas-time, Paul returns to the family flat in the city, where he takes over his little brother's room and refuses to get out of bed, much least to go out. Both Jonathan and their dad Mirko treat him kindly, but fear that he may go down the same path as his sister who committed suicide during a depression.

    Now, I bet that synopsis makes the film sound a bit... depressing. It is. And it isn't. Another one of the many understated qualities of Dans Paris is Honoré's spot-on understanding of depression. Paul's self-exile in the bedroom includes moments of engagement and even humour, providing a multidimensionality to a character who could have easily been just another bore stuck in stagnation. So, while it certainly has a dark, downbeat side for dealing with depression and melancholia, it also has a subtle optimistic and 'less French' side, with the message that anyone who can fall can also pick himself up.

    Louis Garrel continues to prove himself as one of the most talented and utterly charming young actors working today. From the opening, with Jonathan addressing the audience, he captures our affection in an almost unfairly easy and effortless way. His approach to life is high-spirited, to say the least. In less than 24 hours - the time in which the film takes place - he sleeps with no less than three girls, but Garrel and Honoré make sure we don't mistake him for a womaniser. Think of The Dreamers' Theo a lot more enthusiastic about life and living in the 21st century. The chameleon-like Romain Duris also shines next to him, delivering a performance of controlled extremes within the domain of pure truthfulness and intensity. One scene in particular, after a suicide attempt of Duris' character, between him and Garrel on a bathtub, is simply jaw-droppingly haunting and powerful.

    Honoré's mise en scène makes sure to capture Paris' magic, by glimpses at the Eiffel Tower through the family's windows or the boulevards Jonathan uses as his playground. A lot of things happen in Dans Paris that don't in ordinary films. Songs are spontaneously sung, books read quietly and aloud, and the Seine is jumped into several times. All of this seems quite 1960s. Then again, Honoré's choice to use cell phones as well as a lot of direct film references - including two large poster of Van Sant's Last Days (featuring Garrel's former co-star and friend Michael Pitt) and Cronenberg's A History of Violence - reminds us this is happening now, and places Dans Paris in a wider historical framework. All that said, the personal disconnections and interpersonal bonds the film explores are timeless. Cinema is timeless.
  • cartesienne
    July 20, 2008
    cartesienne
    un bon drame très français, à la nouvelle vague...
  • gabrieldib
    June 30, 2008
    gabrieldib
    Back to nouvelle vague.
  • onomatopee
    June 17, 2008
    onomatopee
    Définitivement déprimant mais quelques moments plus jojos aussi, belle complicité entre les acteurs surtout en ce qui concerne Louis Garrel et Romain Duris. Du côté de la réalisation et du montage, on rend hommage au cinéma de la Nouvelle Vague dans le Paris d'aujourd'hui. Très b...( read more)on, mais pas pour tout le monde!
  • SDphotoggirl
    June 15, 2008
    SDphotoggirl
    I enjoyed this film. I like how the people are flawed and there is not a nice resolution to their problems...life just goes on for them by the end of the film. I am always fascinated by movies with deeply flawed characters dealing with their lives. Esecially if they are from over...( read more)seas because American films always have to have a good ending that resolves everything and that is not how life works.
  • meldepano
    January 31, 2008
    meldepano
    o.o i like both actors... :0- it has to be good!
  • refused84
    January 19, 2008
    refused84
    Weird. Comme deux films scindés en un seul. D'un côté, un film sérieux, la dépression de Paul, de l'autre, les battifolages de son petit frère, filmés comme un film de la nouvelle vague, avec plein de références pour les férus de cette époque cinématographique. Une expérience pas...( read more) tout à fait réussie, mais qui vaut le détour. Au moins ce n'est pas banal, et les acteurs sont excellents.
  • isabelleweber1
    January 17, 2008
    isabelleweber1
    Eu só conhecia Louis Garrel em seu papel no fraco e pretencioso 'Os Sonhadores'. 'Dans Paris' me fez ir com a cara dele, gostei da sua atuação espontânea, apesar de achar que o ator devia sair um pouco do esteriótipo 'parisiense blasé'. Esse filme retrata relacionamentos amorosos...( read more) de forma confusa, pois é assim que relacionamentos são. Mostra como duas pessoas passam da felicidade à irritação, ao ponto de não se suportarem, e tem a clássica cena do casal que canta ao telefone.
  • danieljparsons
    December 13, 2007
    danieljparsons
    Fabulous experimental homage to French New Wave cinema; it is warm, perceptive, tender and funny without being pretentious - quite a feat for a film that features direct to camera narration, voice-over and one (superb) musical number. It's one of the few films I've seen that effe...( read more)ctively portrays what it's like to feel your heart break, how no one can help you through it but yourself, how wallowing in depression can be an addiction, and how the smallest incident can gradually take you out of it.

    Romain Duris (The Beat That My Heat Skipped) as the heartbroken Paul, and Louis Garrel (The Dreamers) as womanising Jo, two of France's most talented actors, give effortlessly truthful performances as the brothers. A number of narrative tricks and 'gimmicks' are used but the film never stops flowing - this is what experimental cinema should be about. I loved every minute - more please!
  • PinkSparkle8800
    October 10, 2007
    PinkSparkle8800
    Dans Paris is an odd, off-kilter drama that lurches along for a while -- the disconnected scenes seem almost to be bumping into each other at random -- until, in the final scenes, it all comes together
  • glare22
    August 17, 2007
    glare22
    old film just iffrent name
  • meems932
    August 9, 2007
    meems932
    i kind of want to and then i dont want to.
  • Chuanrenny
    August 8, 2007
    Chuanrenny
    pais again? maybe paris movies r noce. maybe ill watch
  • Venieza
    July 23, 2007
    Venieza
    I hope that it is good
  • stopmeandbuyone
    June 26, 2007
    stopmeandbuyone
    I guess that this film would be described as character based. At this it excels. Quirky, funny and engaging.
  • smartassmatty
    March 8, 2007
    smartassmatty
    LOL NOT THIS MOVIE THO HAHA BUT THE NAME ISNT TO BAD LOL
  • badnight
    March 3, 2007
    badnight
    ohhhhhhhhhh louis garrel,marie,louis garrel, forget romain duris, forget him.
  • theresasein
    November 10, 2006
    theresasein
    Wonderfullly sentimental comprehensible story about failure and depression in life, losing courage to keep on living and the value of family...Especially through the impressive presence of the main parts the story turns into something touching though you can`t help smiling about...( read more) the appearing helplessness of the characters.

Summary

Dans Paris (Inside Paris) Summary