Paris Je T'aime selections

On the subject of short films, I'd like to recommend three short films from the Paris Je T'aime collection:

Quais de Seine (Ve arrondissement) — A meet-cute involving a young man (Cyril Descours) and a young Muslim woman (Leïla Bekhti) that begins while hanging out with his wannabe-debonair friends.
Screenwriter: Paul Mayeda Berges
Director: Gurinder Chadha

Quais de Seine succeeds in the innocence of the encounter, the excitement of the chance-meeting and the hope for more. In the hope for a continued friendship, it is put to us to question how open we are to new relationships, ideas and perceptions.


Faubourg Saint-Denis (Xe arrondissement) — As a young blind man (Melchior Beslon) mistakenly believes that his girlfriend, a struggling actress (Natalie Portman), has broken up with him, he reflects on the growth and seeming decline of their relationship.
Writer/Director: Tom Tykwer

Like Quais de Seine, Fauborg Saint-Denis touches on the fragility of relationships. Tykwer differentiates his film by making clever use of the ambiguity of language, repeating it with a different visual narrative.


14e arrondissement (XIVe arrondissement) — Carol (Margo Martindale), a letter carrier from Denver, Colorado, reads out-loud for her French class, an account of her trip to Paris.
Writer/Director: Alexander Payne.

14e arrondissement succeeds in its honesty. Carol's character is developed in full with the expression of her thoughts and hopes, her fears and actions. As Carol experiences her epiphany so too does the audience, in the end we are as much like her as we decline to admit.