A ex-dancer has a heart problem and even with a transplant, he may still only have a few months to live. Time's spent looking at people/life in Paris from his balcony. His single mom sister moves in with her 3 kids to look after him.
A 40-year-old father's life is complicated when the mother of his two children moves to New York. Since he can't bear them growing up far away from him, he decides to move there as well.
Director:
Cédric Klapisch
Stars:
Romain Duris,
Audrey Tautou,
Cécile de France
A strait-laced French student moves into an apartment in Barcelona with a cast of six other characters from all over Europe. Together, they speak the international language of love and friendship.
Director:
Cédric Klapisch
Stars:
Romain Duris,
Judith Godrèche,
Kelly Reilly
Ten years after their Upper Sixth, Bruno, Momo, Leon and Alain meet together in the waiting room of a maternity hospital. The father of the awaited baby is Tomasi, their best friend at that... See full summary »
Director:
Cédric Klapisch
Stars:
Romain Duris,
Vincent Elbaz,
Nicolas Koretzky
After losing her job at a local factory, a single mother enrolls in a housekeeper training program, soon landing work cleaning the Paris apartment of handsome but cocky power broker.
Chloe, a young woman, is going on holidays. She entrusts her beloved cat to Madame Renée's care. But one day Madame Renée (an old lady of the neighborhood) can not find the cat. Chloe ... See full summary »
Director:
Cédric Klapisch
Stars:
Garance Clavel,
Zinedine Soualem,
Renée Le Calm
After having sex with his girlfriend Lucie in a bathroom, Arthur discovers that a ceiling panel is a time portal to Paris in the future, although it appears more like a sun-baked desert city by that point.
An upper middle-class French family celebrates a birthday in a restaurant. In one evening and during one meal, family history, tensions, collective and separate grudges, delights, and ... See full summary »
Alex and his sister run a business designed to break up relationships. They are hired by a rich man to break up the wedding of his daughter. The only problem is that they only have one week to do so.
After a 10 year absence, Jean returns to his hometown when his father falls ill. Reuniting with his sister Juliette and his brother Jérémie, they have to re-build their relationship and trust as a family again.
"Ni Pour, Ni Contre" tracks the fall of a young TV camerawoman, Caty, after she becomes involved with a group of petty criminals and their enigmatic leader, Jean. The gang lives ... See full summary »
Director:
Cédric Klapisch
Stars:
Marie Gillain,
Vincent Elbaz,
Simon Abkarian
Lepetit, an ambitious and determined man, is named the new CEO of a department store. His mission is to improve the store's financial position. He decides that the human factor will be his ... See full summary »
Director:
Cédric Klapisch
Stars:
Fabrice Luchini,
Daniel Berlioux,
Marc Berman
Pierre, a professional dancer, suffers from a serious heart disease. While he is waiting for a transplant which may (or may not) save his life, he has nothing better to do than look at the people around him, from the balcony of his Paris apartment. When Elise, his sister with three kids and no husband, moves in to his place to care for him, Pierre does not change his new habits. And instead of dancing himself, it is Paris and the Parisians who dance before his eyes.Written by
Guy Bellinger
When the shop-owner of the bakery sell a baguette she asks for 80 cent, doesn't register it in the till, which has the figures 0,00 than it changes to 0,78 than back to 0,00 again. See more »
Quotes
Pierre:
Give chance a chance. I believe in you! Your life's not over! Maybe it hasn't even started.
See more »
Soundtracks
Minuet in G
Music by CP E Bach
avec l'autorisation d'Apple France See more »
No one, but no one, makes movies that better capture a sense of place than Cedric Klapisch. Since the miraculous little When the Cat's Away (Chacun Cherche son Chat, 1996) he's consistently been able to evoke a real sense of lived lives and inhabited city spaces. Wonderful then, to discover that after all the travels of The Spanish Apartment (2002) and Russian Dolls (2005) he's returned to Paris to make one of the best films ever made of those little universes within the City of Light. That said if you know nothing about France or its history and culture you just won't get it!
The hook on which this multidimensional movie hangs is Pierre (Klapisch favorite, Romain Duris), a professional dancer who's justlearned that his heart is failing. A transplant may save him, maybe not. All this has echoes of the great Agnes Varda film, Cleo de 5 a 7 (1962), where Cleo, a young singer played by Corinne Marchand, also gets a frightening diagnosis and she too, walks the streets of the city facing her own death. Maybe Paris (the film) achieves even more as a kind of aubade or farewell to the dance of life that ceaselessly crosses Paris (the city) in time and in space.
The centre of the film is Pierre's sister Élise (Juliette Binoche in her most relaxed and charming performance in years). Elise moves in with Pierre (along with her children!) to help out and her own little adventures as she shops at the local market opens out the film as we discover the complex and many layered live of the market workers, especially glum Jean (Albert Dupontel) and his soon to be ex wife Caroline (Julie Ferrier).
Another story thread follows terminally bored history professor, Roland Verneuil (Fabrice Luchini) embarking on a new career as a TV pundit: these scenes are beautifully satirical yet also curiously touching.
Among the many delights of the movie is a great dream scene where Roland's brother, architect Philippe Verneuil (François Cluzet) is plunged into the 3D Universe used to sell off one of his middle class housing Projects and floats like a tormented Mario Brother from some gleaming modernist disaster to rapturous potential buyers and back again. This delicious scene goes on just long bought to make more than a few silly dreams of home improvement (let alone all those fantastical TV Reality shows) seem, as they are, utterly absurd , yet also quite nightmarish in their silly faith in problem solving by buying stuff. For this alone the movie's worth the price of admission!
Interwoven, too, is the story of the anxious young Benoit in Cameroon, adrift and about to try to join his Paris based émigré family in that most dangerous of ways, the open boat from Africa to Europe. All French life, it seems, is touched upon, not least the political morass facing governments as they grapple with the problem of the poor and dispossessed out in the projects. The music track is equally complex, with that old favorite (since Truffaut used it in Shoot the Piano Player almost fifty years ago!) Erik Satie's Gymnopedie Number 1 again weaving its extraordinary spell! You just have to be there!
Klapisch has done something marvelous here, a film full of ideas and humanity, yet one that somehow enables us to engage with and care for so many complex characters without ever having to resort to stereotypes. It's a great achievement and a glorious movie about that city to which we must all return in our dreams: Paris.
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No one, but no one, makes movies that better capture a sense of place than Cedric Klapisch. Since the miraculous little When the Cat's Away (Chacun Cherche son Chat, 1996) he's consistently been able to evoke a real sense of lived lives and inhabited city spaces. Wonderful then, to discover that after all the travels of The Spanish Apartment (2002) and Russian Dolls (2005) he's returned to Paris to make one of the best films ever made of those little universes within the City of Light. That said if you know nothing about France or its history and culture you just won't get it!
The hook on which this multidimensional movie hangs is Pierre (Klapisch favorite, Romain Duris), a professional dancer who's justlearned that his heart is failing. A transplant may save him, maybe not. All this has echoes of the great Agnes Varda film, Cleo de 5 a 7 (1962), where Cleo, a young singer played by Corinne Marchand, also gets a frightening diagnosis and she too, walks the streets of the city facing her own death. Maybe Paris (the film) achieves even more as a kind of aubade or farewell to the dance of life that ceaselessly crosses Paris (the city) in time and in space.
The centre of the film is Pierre's sister Élise (Juliette Binoche in her most relaxed and charming performance in years). Elise moves in with Pierre (along with her children!) to help out and her own little adventures as she shops at the local market opens out the film as we discover the complex and many layered live of the market workers, especially glum Jean (Albert Dupontel) and his soon to be ex wife Caroline (Julie Ferrier).
Another story thread follows terminally bored history professor, Roland Verneuil (Fabrice Luchini) embarking on a new career as a TV pundit: these scenes are beautifully satirical yet also curiously touching.
Among the many delights of the movie is a great dream scene where Roland's brother, architect Philippe Verneuil (François Cluzet) is plunged into the 3D Universe used to sell off one of his middle class housing Projects and floats like a tormented Mario Brother from some gleaming modernist disaster to rapturous potential buyers and back again. This delicious scene goes on just long bought to make more than a few silly dreams of home improvement (let alone all those fantastical TV Reality shows) seem, as they are, utterly absurd , yet also quite nightmarish in their silly faith in problem solving by buying stuff. For this alone the movie's worth the price of admission!
Interwoven, too, is the story of the anxious young Benoit in Cameroon, adrift and about to try to join his Paris based émigré family in that most dangerous of ways, the open boat from Africa to Europe. All French life, it seems, is touched upon, not least the political morass facing governments as they grapple with the problem of the poor and dispossessed out in the projects. The music track is equally complex, with that old favorite (since Truffaut used it in Shoot the Piano Player almost fifty years ago!) Erik Satie's Gymnopedie Number 1 again weaving its extraordinary spell! You just have to be there!
Klapisch has done something marvelous here, a film full of ideas and humanity, yet one that somehow enables us to engage with and care for so many complex characters without ever having to resort to stereotypes. It's a great achievement and a glorious movie about that city to which we must all return in our dreams: Paris.