Paris

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The problem with multi-character plots is that, because there's no time to get under the skin of the protagonists, the film, short on story, must have an encompassing theme for its raison d'etre. Professional dancer Pierre (Duris) is dying of an undisclosed heart condition and while waiting for a heart transplant he knows could go either way, his sister - single mum Elise (Binoche) - cares for him; Elise flirts with Jean (Dupontel), a vegetable salesman at the local market who is separated from his wife but is forced to watch her flirt with his co-workers; lonely university lecturer Roland (Luchini) falls head over heels for a beautiful student, as his architect brother Phillipe (Francois Cluzet) awaits his impending fatherhood; a stern woman drives her boulangerie employees hard while Benoit (Kinglsey Kum Abang) hopes to make an illegal and perilous journey from Cameroon to Paris to meet a woman he had a connection with before he was deported. So what's the theme? Mortality and sex are to the fore (that's a given - it's a French film) but Paris branches out to explore loneliness ("That's Paris - No one is happy"), how we touch those people who share a pocket of our lives and how our dalliance affects them in return. It's obvious that Kaplisch enjoys some stories more than others, granting them generous screen time, but feels bored with the rest, resulting in his film feeling a little lopsided. Definitely some of his stories could have been jettisoned in to allow others to grow and develop but no. It takes a while to get going and even though the finale is worth sticking around for, with Two Days In Paris, Paris, Je t'aime and Dans Paris (also starring Duris) hitting our screens in the last year or so, have we had enough of the French capital?