Official Paris Je T’aime Trailer
One of several DVDs I picked up on the street in Bangkok was this one, “Paris Je’taime” – a collection of 18 short, quirky love stories set in different locations around the French capital.
Now that I’m back home, and back at work, I was in the mood to relive my trip and put it on. (The fact that the first several minutes were in Thai -until I figured out the audio – just made it even better…)
But the film itself, rather unexpectdly, turned out to be really great; and a perfect souvenir of Paris. I was amazed how many of the places in it I had visited. One of its themes is how people all over the world react to Paris; Latin American domestic workers, African refugees, American tourists, artists and dreamers. There are stories by directors from Mexico (Alfonso Cuaron), Japan (Suwa Nobuhiro – don’t know him), Brazil (Walter Salles), Germany, Italy and Australia (Christopher Doyle).
My favorite stories were Gus Van Sant’s cute gay encounter in Le Marais, Maggie Gyllenhaal as a stoned American actress in a segment by Olivier Assayas, and Natalie Portman in a sweet, little montaged love story directed by Tom Twykner (who did “Run Lola Run”). But the best piece – both funny and sad – was the last one, from the director of the Reese Witherspoon flick “Election”. It is about a middleaged tourist from Denver, and it is pitch perfect. I’ve watched it three times.
Indeed the film was so successful that it spawned a series – a sequel “New York, I Love You” has already been released, as well as a suspiciously similar (but markedly less successful) knockoff, “Tokyo”.
And next up? The 2011 release of something that could prove really special; a loveletter to the first city I ever fell in love with, “Rio, Eu Te Amo”.
The city lends itself perfectly to the project and two topflight directors have already signed on, Fernando Meirelles of “City of God”, “The Constant Gardener” and “Blindness” and Jose Padilha of the hardhitting social-realist crime dramas “Bus 174″ and “Tropa Elite”.
A website is already up featuring vox pops (in Portuguese) with people on the streets of Rio talking about what they love about their hometown.











































