REVIEW | Cedric the Entertainer: Cedric Klapisch’s “Paris”

There are clichés of living, and then there are clichés of film. Klapisch plays around with both in “Paris,” but expressions of the latter often obscure his genius for identifying and honoring the former. Klapisch the writer is too keen to thread his character strands together, sacrificing plausibility and scenic integrity to make an intricate weave. At times the mise-en-scene evokes a Richard Scarry illustration, with the people of the city hustling about as simplistic symbols for themselves. A communion considerably less persuasive than the Roland and Laetitia affair involves a quartet of fashionistas hooking up with hunky laborers during a nightshift, complete with forklift joyrides and fur coats dropped to the meat-locker floor. Opposites may attract, but it needn’t happen on cue or evoke a “Sex and the City” outer borough excursion. Yet Klapisch the director, the one who gives particularity to plotted pattern, almost saves this scene and others. He lets actors like Albert Dupontel and Zinedine Soualem move to internal rhythms, peopling rooms and making conversation of dialogue.

Romain Duris, appearing in his sixth Klapisch film, here assumes a central but detached role. Diagnosed with heart failure and given a 40% chance of survival, dancer Pierre camps out in his apartment, overlooking the city and “Paris”’s players from his balcony. Duris plays Pierre’s melancholy as both mortally justified and romantically indulgent, a complexity that’s wonderfully refracted whenever sister Elise (Juliette Binoche) sweeps into the room. As an overworked, over-sensitive single mother, Binoche hides her beauty and charisma behind gloomy resignation, a slouched contrast to Duris’s casual elegance. The specter of death hangs over their encounters, as well as over most of the other relationships in “Paris,” with finite existence overlapped with sustaining (if ambivalent and received) notions of love, family, and society.

As expected, and frankly wished for, Pierre and Elise finally let loose. And as intended, it’s the film’s high point. Against doctor’s orders, Pierre, desperate to dance, performs haltingly with his colleagues, Duris’s full eyes and weary sighs bridging the gaps between his movements. Elise later swirls across from a suitor, head shaking and hair flying, briefly but fully becoming Juliette Binoche, the most entrancing and humane actor of her generation. There’s cause to remain suspicious of Klapisch’s manipulations here, but only a true killjoy could deny such euphoria. Though ultimately less satisfying — yet more ambitious and adult — than “L’auberge espagnole” and “Russian Dolls,” “Paris” still manages to feel more alive than it ought to. Probably because our lives are more electively clichéd than we’d like to admit.

[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.]

[Eric Hynes is a Reverse Shot staff writer.]