By Ali Goldstein
With much anticipation, I recently rented Paris, Je T’Aime from my local Blockbuster.
My love of all things French sweeps back to my freshman year in high school, memorizing eloquence on the back of flash cards just as I began tripping over my newly gawky limbs. Its notorious romance was the perfect antidote to the fumbling of adolescence.
Even after graduating from high school, I remained a tried and true Francophile. From my stance in suburban exile, where Applebees really is the neighborhood grill and the latest architectural development was the Kohl’s built next to the mall, France seemed to blush ceaselessly in the swoon of new love.
I digress, but only to frame my excitement when I stepped into Blockbuster this past week. I expected tears, sweeping gesture, a rambling love story that would leave my cynic’s heart content at its core: a fragmented, but no less beautiful Chocolat.
The movie certainly shared my ardor for Paris, but its take was more prismatic than I expected. Each director shared their vision of Paris, and thus the resulting film was a collage of neighborhoods and perspectives. It translates the same sense of transience and motion as the best Impressionist paintings: each story and vision depends on the light. Paris isn’t static background wallpaper, but the director. Paris becomes a vehicle for the different angles of love itself.
Finding myself transported from neighborhood to neighborhood, rather than from story line to story line, I began to think about the importance of setting in modern film making, or the lack thereof.
Place was once the foundation of a movie. Without it, the premise of the characters, and consequently the plot, crumbled. Place was used, as in Paris, to evoke larger emotions and themes.
Recently, however, setting has been all but relegated to a footnote in the exposition, if it exists at all. It seems all big-budget romantic comedies are set in New York City and all political thrillers are centered in Washington D.C.
I got excited while watching Lars and the Real Girl because it was set in the Midwest, but apparently being “Midwestern” was specific enough. No city or state was ever given as a setting. I’d anticipated Manistee, Michigan or Madison, Wisconsin, but instead saw only some bleak and vague northern locale that was more “Not Set In New York City,” than “Midwestern.”
Juno, as another example, unfolded in a setting without name or place. It could have been anywhere with snow, and that, perhaps, was part of its point.
But when did setting become an afterthought? Place gives characters their context and quirks; it makes the character. Storyline evolves from a characters roots and where they are from. It seems that the modern movie, however, has become an Applebees of sorts, a neighborhood grill without a neighborhood. In trying to appeal to the greatest number of moviegoers, film makers have stressed homogeneity over complexity.
Where we are from, however, matters. Setting matters. It’s the reason we don’t all have the same story to tell.
Watching Paris, my rapture faded to quiet appreciation. There were no tears, but my cynic’s heart was content at its core. Paris ended up not being about sweeping gesture, rather the subtleties of romance. It focuses on the city of light as the directors knew and loved it, and the result is more enduring 30th anniversary love than the first date flood of infatuation. The film uses the illusion of Paris to highlight its inherent contradictions.
At its close, I couldn’t imagine a similar story told in New York City or Washington D.C. or the suburb of Lansing, Michigan where I grew up. Lansing, Je T’Aime just doesn’t have the same ring. But that, after all, is the point.
3 Comments
January 23, 2008 at 2:23 am
well done. i agree, for the most part, that in a lot of modern film, the significance of setting has been forgotten. however, there are many instances where the vagueness of the setting can help the story.
now onto the movie…
having lived around paris for nearly half of my life, paris, je t’aime was like a piece of nostalgia for me. it brought back memories of day trips to the city. however, it never seemed to be much more than that to me. there were a number of shorts that seemed to drag on and never made much sense. overall it was a pleasant series of love stories and i eagerly await new york, i love you.
January 23, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Intriguing entry. I’m actually truly pleased that, in discussing the “sense of place” with regard to Paris, you didn’t bring up Amélie. In lieu of that, I’d recommend Chacun cherche son chat (known in the US — and available only on VHS here, alas — as When the Cat’s Away), which also has possibly the best trailer I have ever seen.
June 30, 2009 at 4:33 am
Thank you for an interesting read. It is funny that when I read back what I wrote at the time, I had found the city merely a decor rather than a crucial element of the stories.
“(…) despite the international list of film-makers (including some top directors), half the time we seem to be watching Americans in Paris, which makes the city a postcard studio backdrop, against the intention of the film. An unfortunate consequence of the project, which leaves a feeling of disorientation. The movie is neither French, nor is it from anywhere specific, which brings about this cultural schizophrenia. Loving Paris is not about ‘backdrops’, but about people and French culture. Since that is lacking, we must take the movie as ‘Loving in Paris’, where the capital plays a strictly aesthetic background role. Mostly pleasant, but actually not good enough within the context of the project.”
Funny difference of approach, don’t you think? You know most French films are set in Paris with a Parisian audience in mind. This one, was clearly not so intended.