War and Remembrances
City of Lights, City of Angels winds down with dark ruminations and hopeful sentiments
As it happens, it’s the freedom-fries-loving Yanks who emerge from Paris Je T’aimethe least scathed, in the delicate act of youthful seduction that comprises Gus Van Sant’s “Le Marais” and in the wacky sparring match between two married acting divas (Bob Hoskins and Fanny Ardant) staged by Richard LaGravanese in the red-light district of “Pigalle.” Best of all — and, fittingly, saved for last — is Alexander Payne’s “14th Arrondissement,” in which a Denver letter carrier (the wonderful Margo Martindale) reports, in disarmingly awkward schoolgirl French, on her six-day Paris vacation. Overflowing with Payne’s signature dry wit and the potent je ne sais quoi that seduces so many foreign visitors to the City of Lights, this miniature masterpiece is the most unapologetically American segment of Paris Je T’aime, yet also the one that comes the closest to the small-scale humanism of the most French of French filmmakers — Jean Renoir. Presented with such a contradiction, what else can one say except the obvious: “C’est la vie!”
CITY OF LIGHTS, CITY OF ANGELS | Directors Guild of America | Through April 22 | www.colcoa.org
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