Thursday

I couldn't decide what film to see. Looking at the showtimes, there was nothing that I desperately felt like watching. Then I realised that they had stopped accounting for the Curzon cinemas. And so it was that I found and went to see Dans Paris in Soho. This film contains some of the greatest moments of contemporary cinema I've seen in a long time. A pretty bold statement? Perhaps. Three or four people did leave during the movie, and I heard one person say afterwards 'I hated that'. So this film will divide opinion. It owes a lot to its French New Wave roots. If you don't get that, you may lose something here. I personally have never quite got on with that particular genre/era. It's sometimes a bit too knowing and pretentious, and the rambling jazz music doesn't do much for me. The beginning of this film seemed to follow a similar pattern. I wasn't too interested. The skips forward and backwards in time were irritating. It seemed to be saying 'you're interested in this', rather than 'please be interested in this'. People were having convoluted, philosophical conversations on the nature of their relationships, as they tend to do in Paris, and I was a little bored. Eventually, however, it settled down into the one day in which most of the rest of the action took place. This was great. From then on I was hooked. The brother, Jonathan, was the most interesting character here with his... well, I won't spoil it for you. You should go see it. It's as post-modern as you'll like: characters speaking direct to camera about themselves as characters etc. I left the cinema thinking 'this was great', and really wanting to watch it again. A refreshing movie.