franzrebs

I was looking for a movie about Paris, and by sheer luck Netflix gave me this. It was more than I had asked for and now it's one of my favorites. It's the kind of film that you can watch many times over and you leave with something new each time.

The poster, and the first few scenes lead you to think it's a love story. It is not. Soon enough it descends into deep existentialism and an exploration of the subconscious.

I love the camera work in this, the persepective is intimate as if I was watching a Terrence Malick film though it also has the surrealism of a Lynch film or Eternal Sunshine.

The script is superbly written, the dialogues are raw and the monologues poetic.

I don't understand why this film has such a low rating here or why I never heard about if before. Perhaps some disappointed viewers who wanted a romantic drama.

Only one-thirds into the movie did I realize what it was supposed to be: a multi-layered, poetic piece with lofty characters. I should've gotten the hint from the opening scene and the narrative prose throughout the movie. Unfortunately it all ended up as too pretentious and cannot even be filed under the pool of psychological thrillers.

It's got a lot of lost potential; we've got some good actors caught in their bad moments, as if they couldn't afford another take. It was difficult to empathize with any of the characters. Eventually I got tired of watching Thomas (Daniel Brühl) going on impulsive snog fests with Simone and sniff cocaine because god knows why... it's hard to figure out what kind of character he's supposed to be. The only two characters true-to-form were Edoardo (Valerio Mastandrea) and Melanie (Cara Delevingne), and I'd have to give a special mention to Delevingne mostly for actually doing well in her first speaking part in a feature film.