| Paris, je t'aime | |
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 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | see below |
| Written by | Emmanuel Benbihy (transitions) see below |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | see below |
| Cinematography | Various |
| Edited by | Various |
| Music by | Pierre Adenot |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 120 minutes[1] |
| Countries | |
| Languages |
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| Budget | $13 million[3] |
| Box office | $17.5 million[4] |
Paris, je t'aime (French pronunciation:[paʁiʒətɛm];lit. 'Paris, I Love You') is a 2006anthology film starring anensemble cast of actors of various nationalities. The two-hour film consists of eighteenshort films set in differentarrondissements (districts). The 22 directors includeGurinder Chadha,Sylvain Chomet,Joel and Ethan Coen,Isabel Coixet,Gérard Depardieu,Wes Craven,Alfonso Cuarón,Nobuhiro Suwa,Alexander Payne,Tom Tykwer,Walter Salles,Yolande Moreau andGus Van Sant. It was the first film in theCities of Love franchise.
Film directorJulio Medem was attached to the project for a long time. He was supposed to direct one of the segments starringJavier Bardem andMaria Valverde,[5] but this finally fell through because of scheduling conflicts with the filming ofCaótica Ana (2007).[citation needed]
Paris, je t'aime is the first feature film to be fully scanned in 6K and mastered in4K in Europe (as opposed to the normal 2K). Encoding the image took about 24 hours per reel (at Laboratoires Éclair).[citation needed]
Both Claudie Ossard andEmmanuel Benbihy served as producers on the project, whileGilles Caussade acted as an executive producer. As the film is a collection of shorter segments, there were also producers attached to each episode of the project.
Initially, 20 short films representing the 20arrondissements of Paris were planned, but two of them (the15tharrondissement, directed byChristoffer Boe, and the11tharrondissement, byRaphaël Nadjari) were not included in the final film because they could not be properly integrated into it.[6] Eacharrondissement is followed by a few images of Paris; these transition sequences were written byEmmanuel Benbihy and directed by Benbihy with Frédéric Auburtin. Including Benbihy, there were 22 directors involved in the finished film.
| Segment | Arrondissement | Director | Writer | Description | Actors |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Montmartre | 18th | Bruno Podalydès | A man parks his car on a Montmartre street and muses about how the women passing by his car all seem to be "taken". A woman passerby then faints near his car, and he comes to her aid. | Bruno Podalydès, Florence Muller | |
| Quais de Seine | 5th | Gurinder Chadha | Chadha andPaul Mayeda Berges | A young man, hanging out with two friends who catcall women who walk by, strikes up a friendship with a young Muslim woman. | Cyril Descours,Leïla Bekhti |
| Le Marais | 4th | Gus Van Sant | A young male customer finds himself attracted to a young printshop worker and tries to explain that he believes the man to be his soulmate, not realising that he speaks little French. | Gaspard Ulliel,Elias McConnell,Marianne Faithfull | |
| Tuileries | 1st | Joel and Ethan Coen | A comedy in which an American tourist waiting at theTuileries station becomes involved in the conflict between a young couple after he breaks the cardinal rule of avoiding eye contact with people on theParis Métro. | Steve Buscemi, Axel Kiener, Julie Bataille | |
| Loin du 16e | 16th | Walter Salles andDaniela Thomas | A young immigrant woman sings a Spanish lullaby ("Que Linda Manita") to her baby before leaving it in a daycare. She then takes an extremely long commute to the home of her wealthy employer (whose face is not seen), where she sings the same lullaby to her employer's baby. | Catalina Sandino Moreno | |
| Porte de Choisy | 13th | Christopher Doyle | Doyle, Gabrielle Keng Peralta and Rain Kathy Li | A comedy in which a sales representative for a line of hair products makes a call on aChinatown salon run by a woman who proves to be a tough customer. | Barbet Schroeder, Li Xin |
| Bastille | 12th | Isabel Coixet | Prepared to leave his marriage for a much younger lover, a man named Sergio instead decides to stay with his wife after she reveals a terminal illness—and he rediscovers the love he once felt for her. | Sergio Castellitto,Miranda Richardson,Javier Cámara,Leonor Watling | |
| Place des Victoires | 2nd | Nobuhiro Suwa | A mother, grieving over the death of her little son, is comforted by a magical cowboy. | Juliette Binoche,Willem Dafoe, Martin Combes | |
| Tour Eiffel | 7th | Sylvain Chomet | A boy recounts how his parents, bothmime artists, meet in prison and fall in love. | Paul Putner,Yolande Moreau | |
| Parc Monceau | 17th | Alfonso Cuarón | An older man and younger woman meet for an arrangement that a third person (Gaspard), who is close to the woman, may not be happy about. It is eventually revealed that the young woman is his daughter, and Gaspard is her baby. The segment was shot in a singlecontinuous shot, almost five minutes long. When the characters walk by a video store, several posters of films by the other directors ofParis, je t'aime are visible in the window. | Nick Nolte,Ludivine Sagnier | |
| Quartier des Enfants Rouges | 3rd | Olivier Assayas | An American actress procures some exceptionally stronghashish from a dealer whom she develops a crush on. | Maggie Gyllenhaal, Lionel Dray | |
| Place des fêtes | 19th | Oliver Schmitz | A Nigerian man dying from a stab wound in the Place des fêtes asks a female paramedic for a cup of coffee. It is then revealed that he had fallen in love at first sight with her some time previously. By the time she remembers him, and has received the coffee, he has been taken away in an ambulance. | Seydou Boro,Aïssa Maïga | |
| Pigalle | 9th | Richard LaGravenese | An aging couple act out a fantasy argument for a prostitute in order to keep the spark in their relationship. | Bob Hoskins,Fanny Ardant | |
| Quartier de la Madeleine | 8th | Vincenzo Natali | In this dialogueless segment, a young backpacker travelling late at night stumbles across a vampire feeding on a dead man. Though initially frightened, he soon falls in love with her, and cuts his wrist to attract her with his blood. The wound causes the backpacker to fall down a flight of stairs and strike his head against the pavement in a potentially fatal injury, but the vampire reappears and feeds him some of her own blood, turning him into a vampire and allowing the two to begin a relationship. | Elijah Wood,Olga Kurylenko | |
| Père-Lachaise | 20th | Wes Craven | While visitingPère Lachaise Cemetery, a young woman breaks up with her fiancé, who then redeems himself with the aid of advice from the ghost ofOscar Wilde. | Emily Mortimer,Rufus Sewell,Alexander Payne | |
| Faubourg Saint-Denis (True) | 10th | Tom Tykwer | After mistakenly believing that his girlfriend, a struggling American actress, has broken up with him, a young blind man reflects on the growth and seeming decline of their relationship. | Melchior Beslon,Natalie Portman | |
| Quartier Latin | 6th | Frédéric Auburtin andGérard Depardieu | Gena Rowlands | A separated couple meet at a bistro for one last drink before the two officially divorce. | Gena Rowlands,Ben Gazzara, Gérard Depardieu |
| 14e arrondissement | 14th | Alexander Payne | Payne and Nadine Eïd | Carol, aletter carrier fromDenver on her first European holiday, recites in amateur French what she loves about Paris. | Margo Martindale |
The film premiered at the2006 Cannes Film Festival on 18 May, opening theUn Certain Regard selection.[7] It had its Canadian premiere at the2006 Toronto International Film Festival on 10 September and its US premiere inPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 9 April 2007.[8]Paris, je t'aime was released theatrically in France on 21 June 2006 by La Fabrique de Films, in Switzerland on 13 September 2006 by Ascot Elite Entertainment Group and in Germany on 25 January 2007 bySenator Film.[9]First Look Pictures acquired the North American rights in September 2006,[10] and the film opened in New York City on 4 May 2007, before expanding to other American cities including Los Angeles on 18 May.[11]
Paris, je t'aime received generally positive reviews. On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 86% based on 112 reviews, with an average rating of 7.1/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Paris Je T'aime is uneven, but there are more than enough delightful moments in this omnibus tribute to the City of Light to tip the scale in its favor."[12]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 66 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[13]
Following the success ofParis, je t'aime, a similarly structured film,New York, I Love You, focusing on life in that city, premiered at the2008 Toronto International Film Festival and received alimited theatrical release in 2009. The third and fourth entries in the series,Tbilisi, I Love You andRio, I Love You, were released in 2014.Berlin, I Love You followed in 2019.
The film was the first part of the film almanac series "...I love you". The action of each takes place in one of the cities of the globe:
United States
Russia
Mexico, takes place after theMexican Revolution in 1910.
China
Ukraine
Kyrgyzstan Russia
Cuba
Kazakhstan
Brazil United States
Israel
Georgia
Azerbaijan Russia Russia
Germany Kazakhstan