In Paris
(Dans Paris)
With Romain Duris, Louis Garrel, Alice Butaud.
France, 2006, 35mm, color, 92 min.
French with English subtitles.
Print source: IFC
The film that launched Honoré’s “trilogy,” Dans Paris draws on the director’s interest in rethinking family relations with a concentration on the city’s own participation in that dynamic. Indeed, Paris is a central character for this and Honoré’s two subsequent films, Les Chansons d’amour and La Belle personne. Dans Paris pursues a family at once in disintegration and transformation, focusing on two brothers, one a womanizer and the other suffering from a breakup. After the shock of Ma mère, Dans Paris is striking for its charm, but it also shows Honoré continuing his audacious experiments in adapting film form to narrative, here using direct address and characters who suddenly burst into song. It is a brilliant film for its approach to narrative in concert with its use of cinematic form.