Blu-ray Movie Reviews

In "Paris Je T'aime", celebrated directors from around the world have come together to portray Paris in a way never before imagined. Made by a team of contributors as cosmopolitan as the city itself, this portrait of the city is as diverse as its creators' backgrounds and nationalities. With each director telling the story of an unusual encounter in one of the city's neighborhoods, the vignettes go beyond the 'postcard' view of Paris to portray aspects of the city rarely seen on the big screen.

I’ve been keeping my eye out for this film to appear on Blu-ray but I thought I would end up having to import it. It was a surprise when I received it for review from First Look as I didn’t know it was coming out here stateside. The film is a collage of short stories from a huge list of directors that give you a glimpse of different characters and lovers in France. Each story is quite different from the next and not all of them are exactly complete. While I enjoyed the majority of them I was a bit disappointed that some of them were so short and didn’t have any resolve. I was hoping they would be revisited later in the film but that wasn’t the case. Still there are some very strong entries here and a brilliant cast with lots of very familiar actors.

The HD presentation is good here but the image is just short of reference quality HD. Despite having a broad list of directors, the style of the photography rarely changes. There are a few exceptions but the filming style is very natural with little stylization aside from one short. Colors are very natural in tone and intensity and contrast levels are strong throughout. Close ups deliver great detail and depth of image is quite strong throughout. The image has a very natural film like quality to it and doesn’t rely on a bunch of stylization to get its point across.

The soundtrack selection says it’s Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and in English but that just isn’t the case. There are only a couple shorts that have English in them and despite selecting the English track the subtitles for the majority of the French dialogue do not come on automatically. Here is the bad part; First Look has only included English subtitles for the hearing impaired. This means you get all the dialogue translations, but you also get all the descriptors for the noises in the film. I can’t tell you how annoying this is. We saw this before with the release of District B-13. Standard subtitles should have been included for this film, especially for a US release of a film that’s dialogue is over 90% French. The soundtrack should also say it’s French, not English.

Extras include a behind the scenes look at the production including interviews and on set footage. You also get some trailers for other First Look titles.

This was a great collection of short films with some very touching performances. I was disappointed in how the subtitles were handled but the rest of the A/V presentation was strong. Recommended.