good back-story, and good acting

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

A very nice and touching film by Honoré, its resonances with the works of Truffaut, Eustache, Garrell, are obvious and magnificent (the Garrell and Truffaut links are even physically enacted in the presence of young Louis, an updated version of Jean-Pierre Léaud, his godfather): Narcissism and suicide, narcissism as suicide, as well as its antidote. The Frame: A tableau of the rigorous impossibility of mutual caring and love which isn't, also and at the same time, an act of mutual destruction. And the Truffaut-Desplechin principle: each minute, five new ideas. The pattern: A man comes back to live in his father's house, where he meets his younger brother, himself in a previous stage. He has played with love and met his match, a woman more powerful than him, more narcissistic, one who managed to play with h i s love. He has come back shattered, back to his childhood house, watching his brother wrecking the lives of young women and identifying with his dead sister, a position he slowly moves into. But by now, his narcissism has become too strong to follow his sister's path, he cannot die (he cannot drown, he swims against his will), he can only move on forward - a flicker of hope - more than a Garrell movie would have ever offered us (and more than the story of the hero's father and mother, the previous generation, seem to offer us) - to a place where love may indeed be possible without one falling apart and a prey to the other in the process. Finally, a journey back in time, a new future - a young weak woman knocks on the door (the bunny meets a frightened, wiser, wolf), will that hope ever materialize?Recommended.

Apparently this rather languid French flick is something of an homage to the New Wave. There's quite a bit of all manner of homage running throughout in fact, with symbols namechecking JD Salinger and even - with a bedtime story concerning a cartoon wolf called Lulu - the resonance of another unrepentantly Parisian film, la Séparation. If Christian Vincent's film is about the rupture of a family unit then Honoré's concerns is re-composition, two brothers and estranged parents grope to rediscover their mutual centre of gravitation.Inevitably it's all about style though, which often means simply filming on location, Dans Paris indeed. There are a number of quirks to make us mindful of the disjunct connections the family have to one another - an early break in the fourth wall as Louis Garrel addresses the camera, sped-up and fast-cut sequences, a touching final phone call where Romain Duris and his estranged girlfriend begin to sing their conversation along with the (non-diegetic) soundtrack. I found the capricious narrative trying and the tale wilfully inconclusive, despite a suggestion of schematic form. The acting's average too. 4/10

Paul(Romain Duris) can't live with or without Anna(Joana Preiss). Jonathan(Louis Garrel) broke the fourth wall in the opening moments of "Dans Paris" and announces that the movie won't have a narrator. He's not the main character; Paul is, according to Jonathan. The narrator is lying. Jonathan's the main character because "Dans Paris" is about narration. Like most films, "Dans Paris" will proceed with omniscient narration. Unlike most films, however, the audience isn't made aware of this given. There's a tacit agreement between the filmmaker and moviegoer that the film begins where the backstory leaves off. But Jonathan speaks directly to the camera, forcing the viewer out of his passive stance. Jonathan isn't Paul's big brother, but he is "big brother" in the Orwellian sense of the word. Jonathan is literally, the omniscient narrator."Dans Paris" breaks down its story into two sections: Paul with Anna, and Paul without Anna. This compartmentalization extends to the mode of narration. When Paul and Anna are together, "Dans Paris" records their relationship in a non-linear fashion. When they're apart, the story becomes more sequential in its telling. The first part is told in non-sequential order because Jonathan picks and chooses what interests him the most; not surprisingly, most of the scenes feature Anna in a state of undress. Personal hygiene, or the lack of personal hygiene, is a subject that Anna broaches when Paul leaves their bed to take a shower. Anna believes Paul is leading by example. Paul's decision to lather up, Anna thinks, is tied in to the hope that she'll follow suit. Accused of being rank in a passive-aggressive fashion, Anna flips her lid. Since it's unlikely that Paul would share this moment with Jonathan, the viewer is led to believe that the younger brother is a filmic interloper, the camera's eye in the flesh. When Jonathan bumps into an old flame, this ex-lover cites personal hygiene for their break-up. In other words, "Dans Paris" has echoes. If Jonathan "controls the vertical and the horizontal", he controls the story of his life that's being narrated. Three women in one day, hmmm. We see it. But we see what he wants us to see.A cursory glance at "Dans Paris" suggests that this neo-French New Waver is about a sad man who lost his girlfriend, but if you're attuned to the self-reflexive opening, you'll understand that it's really about narration.

I liked the avant-garde touches such as the address-to-camera in the opening, the speeded-up lovers cavorting by the Seine and touches like Jon reading a copy of 'Franny et Zooey' (another story with a dead sister)or that he stops in front of two film posters in the street, neither of which I've seen but both of which I'm sure are relevant. The conversation Paul has with Jon's forlorn girl-friend about his theory of sadness is also very moving, as is Paul's reading of the children's storybook to his younger brother, if both are somewhat obscure.The father preparing dinner whilst his estranged wife outlines the difficulties of their previous relationship seems rooted in reality. Paul's self-destructive behaviour and the see-saw moods of his relationship are bizarre believable. The relationships are discussed in a way that is both reflective and expressive, such a change from the cutesy-clichés of American romances.