Highly Overrated But Still Good

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

"Nadja à Paris" is a French French-language live action short film that runs for a bit over 13 minutes and was released back in 1964, so it is already over half a century old. The protagonist you see in here is the late Nadja Tesich and she tells us a bit about her life in Paris as the title already suggests. I believe, not just because of the character having the same first name, that this is a true documentary. Tesich also wrote the screenplay here. The director is the late Eric Rohmer inm the earlier, but not earliest stages of his career. He is definitely more known than his lead here, but there is something missing in terms of charm that other French filmmakers during that time achieved with their black-and-white (short) films. It never feels as defining in terms of how Paris is depicted. The central character never feels really too interesting to watch and same can be said about the minor characters who disappear again as quickly as they enter the picture. Quite a bit of a shame I must say as I really wanted to like this one more than I did eventually. Even the music is forgettable and the savoir-vivre element is missing almost completely. Watch something else instead.

This short will resonate with those, who in that beautifully exploratory, slightly melancholy part of their youthful discoveries of themselves, have lived abroad in a city like Paris - alone. There is no structure to the film, as there is no preordained structure to this exploratory journey. It's done through aimless, open-minded adventures and chance encounters that have an almost deterministic quality to them. This feast of food, art, strangers and friends-- this, Paris offers in abundance.The film builds to a moving denouement in which the heroine reflects on what Paris has taught her about growing up. Nothing happens, but everything happens.

Before he began making cinematic films, French New Wave director Eric Rohmer made some films on the cheap. To put it bluntly, they look a lot like home movies or a film posted on YouTube (if they had it back in the 1960s). I assume he used an 8mm hand-held camera."Nadja à Paris" is included on the Criterion disc for "Suzanne's Career"--another short Rohmer film from the mid-60s. Like "Suzanne's Career", the film has a LOT of narration by the main character but unlike "Suzanne's Career", the film doesn't even have dialog. It consists of a young co-ed talking to the camera as you see her go about her life--which, oddly, never seems to show her attending classes. Instead, she roams about Paris while she narrates. Much of the action seems pretty random--like Rohmer had no real idea what he was going to do with the film while he was taking it. This randomness and lack of traditional structure is VERY New Wave--the sort of stuff critics at the time (particularly Rohmer's buddies like Godard and Truffaut) adored but which bored the life out of the average person. My feeling is that this is only for extreme lovers of the New Wave and Rohmer fans. It's a decent way to see the progression of Rohmer's craft but is about as interesting as watching paint dry.Because this is an experimental film, I am not going to give it a numerical score. It just defies conventional scoring and standards.

The film says what it is as Nadja (acted and also written by Nadja Tesich) narrates her slacker existence in 64' Paris that is more (It has a better resume than our narrator.) a new wave Paris travelogue than Nadja. Nadja has the trendy look and possible mood of the impetuous, youthful feel ex-pat (ala Seberg) but only manages to project a spoiled child's lassitude which even at 24 minutes in length is overlong.What makes this celluloid brevity interesting is the fact that it is directed by Eric Rohmer and lensed by Nestor Almendros (Days of Heaven). In Rohmer's case Nadja might serve as an opening to one of his moral tales - it certainly mimics the dull, self absorbed characters that never seem to get anywhere in his lengthier efforts. With Almendros photography you are given no clue he would become the accomplished cinematographer he was in both Europe and Hollywood. Some of it resembles my college film class super eight work with a poorly oiled tripod. It's encouraging to know that there were moments that he was as bad as me.