‘PARIS” when it fizzles — which is most of the time — is a dismal series of character portraits about a cross-section of Parisians mulling turning points in their lives.
Romain Duris and Juliette Binoche star as a brother and sister. He is confronting a deadly heart malady, while she needs a boyfriend. Meanwhile, a smitten university professor (the perfectly cast Fabrice Luchini) develops an obsessive crush on a pretty student (Mélanie Laurent of “Inglourious Basterds”), while his architect brother (François Cluzet) frets about the upcoming birth of his first child.
The Duris figure isn’t the only one with heart problems; the movie by writer-director Cédric Klapisch barely has a pulse. Despite strong acting by his Robert Altman-esque ensemble, the various stories bump against one another rather than cohere. There is both too much and too little going on. An African, for instance, longs to return to his beloved France but never seems more than an off-the-shelf type.
Klapisch has little feel for a fish seller Binoche flirts with in the market every day, but seems to have thrown in this working-class guy to balance his broody bourgeoisie. The relationship between the prof and his student, hackneyed as it is, never approaches plausibility.
The tales mostly drift along and wrap up unresolved. If this is an accurate slice of Paris life, I’ll take the relative excitement of Topeka.