Paris je t’aime & all about dreams

With many vacationers back this week the cinema halls in Paris have announced a three day special. Trois euros trois jours. Next time it rains—which is likely to be within the next hour or two—step up to the challenge of loving Paris in crappy weather by stepping out of the street and into the theater. While there might not be dozens of new films recently out you might want to see there are definitely three. The first of which is the magnificent collage of short films, each shot in a specific neighborhood, by directors ranging from Gurinder Chadha to Ethan & Joel Coen. You will find fantasy and humor in some and a sadness in many. The points of views taken by these directors are varied: universal tales of immigration, displacement, and poverty; inevitable stories of tourists who discover they are in for more than they bargained; love stories with twists and curls. In the end some vignettes are more successful than others but the overall experience is rich. It is a treat to pass from the Coens to Walter Salles and Daniela Thomson, from Assayas to Oliver Shmitz, all is so short a span of time. Someone in the line ahead of me tried to buy her ticket in English. The usher told her she wouldn’t follow the film if she didn’t speak French and indeed most of the documentaries are in French. But she argued that she was here to see Paris and she was right. With these directors the small matter of language does not get in the way.

La Science des Rêves (dir. Michel Gondry Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and La Tourneuse de Pages (dir. Denis Dercourt) are two other films to watch for. For anyone who has a reach dream life, Gondry’s film captures with many quirky touches the story of a young man who sometimes reverses his waking moments for his dream ones and vice versa. Goudry’s tactics on the screen include scenes with many toy machines and cardboard cutout cities that in the end, somewhat surprisingly, work. At one moment Stéphane dreams his hands are larger than him, the caricatural portrayal in the film is believable at a sensorial level. The success of this film lies in jumping over some of the hurdles posed by our reason and giving us a lifelike experience of someone else’s interiority which is far removed from ours. Much of the film is in English so you can follow along what is essential to the plot.

La Tourneuse de Pages is a psychological film with a plot that is not too hard to predict. A young girl is thwarted in her aspiration to win a piano competition and returns years later to work for the husband of the same woman (a concert pianist) who was responsible for her failure. She wins the affection of the couple and the trust of the concert pianist who is now going through a phase of extreme nervousness following an accident. The pianist entrusts her with turning her pages during a performance. The actors all interpret their roles to near perfection. With Pascal Greggory and Catherine Frot you’d expect no less. But the young woman who plays la tourneuse Déborah Français is also subtle. The role of a calm, cool, calculating, unshakeable woman out to get even is a perfect showcase for this relatively unknown young actress. The music of this film (both that played by the concert pianist and the soundtrack) combined with the tension-filled and often wordless interaction between Frot and Français make this film totally absorbing. It is entirely in French, however I’d be surprised if it didn’t have a US screening at the NY French film festival in April.

Goya in the Parisian Rain

At moments it might seem debatable that any city, even Paris, can remain beautiful under the black shadow of an umbrella. The hottest July in history has given way to what is likely to be the coldest recorded August—Parisians brought out their winter coats yesterday in mid-summer. If you want to get away from the gloom of global warming and this new century’s many wars go and see Goya. The Mairie du 5^e Arrodnissement directly across the Panthéon houses not just the offices of the town hall but a fabulous Seurat inspired wall mural of the Tuileries à La Grande Jatte by a painter whose name I could not decipher. They also have on exhibit, until the 15^th of October, Goya’s L’œuvre Gravée. For anyone who caught Goethe’s collection of Goya’s at the Frick this is a comprehensive extension of his small format works.

These etchings on engravings include a selection of portraits of political dignitaries, illustrated proverbs many of which are idiomatic and need some reflection, and his rarely seen work on the French invasion of Spain by Napoléon. Goya let’s the calamities of the war speak for themselves. In front of his illustrations of its horrors and atrocities we can step out of our times to find a universal perspective outside of history and reflect in a new way on what we witness today. Goya recorded the famine and civil suffering that went in hand with the war as well but a vast number of the works present are direct reports from the battlefield. A pile of dead bodies with casualties on both sides is simply labeled We are born for this. One of Goya’s detractors said that it would be better if Goya left stains of paint and didn’t try to make faces out of them. In the haunting old women and men and the suffering of all ages on display at 21 Place du Panthéon no observation could seem less lacking in insight.

The exhibition also has a short series of Goya’s works devoted to bull-fighting, a wonderful opportunity to examine pieces that in my view directly inspired Manet. While Manet’s admiration of the Spanish masters and his travels to Spain are well known, in Goya’s bullfight series you can find the Goya’s Manet used as the reference frame for his bullfight painting that hangs in the Frick. The same low arena wall, the same experience of being inside the ring. There is another Goya that shows some people on a balcony, Manet, I have no doubt, painted his Orsay painting of his step son and wife in the balcony window in direct homage to this one.

THIS Summer in Paris

I’m taking a Frenchward twist this summer to fill you on things to do (fun and otherwise if you get here in the month of August when your Parisian friends are all away on vacation) and to talk about some of my own projects in the hope that it’ll make more disciplined.

Le Grand Palais across the Invalides on the other side of the ornate Pont Alexandre III has a weird exhibition of machines used in performances on until the 13^th of August. These contraptions have served on film sets and were often conceived in the late eighties and nineties though they have an air of the 1800s about them. Some twenty orange vested guides walk from set to set explaining how each machine works and demonstrate its principles. Unfortunately to get their jokes you must speak French but the basic demo is self-explanatory. Don’t miss the cannon that shoots out eggs (no really!) or the person strapped in a circle to the inside of a large wheel who manages to play a set of drums as she is rotated within the wheel. Despite these few oddities, the real reason to visit Le Grand Palais is not the temporary show but the structure itself. Created for one of the Exposition Universelle this building with its immensely high glass ceiling and magnificently exposed green-pipe skeleton that keeps it aloft is worth a visit. A charming wooden bar serves refreshments, another more enticing one offers a view from the heights. This building is unlike anything you’ve seen. So go.

Also I have started my open-ended very long term Pont Neuf Project. This is an attempt at roughly (as in very roughly) sketching the gargoyle men that dot the bridge. Don’t ask why… The project got off to a rather rocky start on the 2^nd of August since the south-eastern exposure of the bridge, which was also my point of departure, is undergoing some heavy duty travaux. It is therefore noisy, polluted, and unpleasurable at the moment. Here is the seventh man starting from the left done in ink on paper. Along the way I hope I’ll stumble on more about the Atelier of Germain Pilon which produced some if not all these faces. There is a rue Germain Pilon in the eighteenth but cela n’a rien avoir avec le pont. There are also two fallen gargoyles at the Musée Carnavalet (which by the way is a free museums) one can inspect at close quarters. By the time I’m done with half the bridge, as in a lot of faces, I’m wondering if my hand will get even rougher and more impatient or the opposite. I’ve never had a long term project like this so let’s see where it goes.

Finally a reminder, if you’re in town on the 14^th of August, that is next Monday, then I’m reading at the historic Shakespeare and Company 37 rue de la Bûcherie across the river from the Notre Dame.