Wiggly Socks Movie Reviews

Pierre is (Romaine Duris) a professional dancer, in a chorus in Moulin Rouge. His life turns changes abruptly when he finds out that he has a heart problem serious enough to possibly defy even a transplant. Pierre invites his sister Elise (Juliet Binoche) and her kids to his top floor, tiny apartment where the main feature is the view of a cemetery. Elise is a social worker with 3 kids whose husband left her; his leaving left her with no desire to try again.

Professor of history Roland Verneuil (Luchini) is smitten by one of his students. He admits to his happily married brother that he is sending her anonymous phone message, like a stupid teenager. Laetitia (Melanie Laurent) finds him out, confronts him and goes to bed with him. Later she informs him that the charm was in the cliché of the affair.
In another variations, Elise shops at the market with her kids, where a fishmonger Franky (Gilles Lellouche) flirts with her while she finds the grocer Jean (Albert Dupontel) more appealing. Jean’s ex-girlfriend Caroline (Julie Ferrier) still works with him but her flirtation with the other men, especially Franky, drives Jeannuts. Than there is racist woman who runs the bakery (Karin Viard) and an employee Khadija (Sabrina Ouazani),she took on to help her out, and an African man working in France illegally.

All those characters, and all those parts of Paris, are loosely connected by Pierre, and to some degree Elise.
In a take on Cleo 5 to 7(Cleo is waiting for diagnosis, Pierre for a donor), Pierre represents a man who sees the world anew. He's been shocked from his, and our, commonplace indifference into seeing and feeling the fleeting moments as the most important, as the real life, because its passing is no longer slow but unendurably fast.

The nearly episodic life of the characters is in genre of the passing envy of the dying. In the clichés, beauty of Paris is the eternal other side to human butterfly experience. And within the experience things, or relationship, are also fleeting. The expected is to be met and seen again, the Seine, the fashion shows, the baguettes from the boulangerie, cemetery Pere Lachaise, even a man playing piano accordion. Of course, in real life people get drunk at Pere Lachaise and piss into the Seine.

This is actually quite unusual perception of human misery, and it is easier to understand what is Klapish trying to do (and not quite achieving), when you remember some miserable moment in your life when the smallest detail was suddenly brought out, standing boldly out as a relief on the wall, something small, unnoticed, such a stain on the ceiling or the hair on the back of your lover's hand.

Klapish uses some 10 characters, the city of Paris and 130 minutes of film time to get that feeling across to his audience. Which is where it gets a bit too long in the tooth, and a bit too much of the other. Like say Magnolia, it’s losing the viewer’s interest because the mundane overrides the unexpected.

Klapish studied film in New York and likes Woody Allen, inevitably it was suggested that he tries to use Paris as Allen uses Manhattan, but I would guess that there is a true divide. Where Allen presents life as series of interconnected events, Klapish is trying to say that while we are living, we are ceasing to feel alive. Albeit his point is a bit on the rambling side and unless you look deeply, you might miss it.

It is refreshing that Pierre can be quite unpleasant; I am tired of victims of any misfortune being nice or even grateful for anything, and Elise is equally disgruntled rather than overly devoted social worker, much more realistic. As for female sexual desires and behavior, well, Klapish is certainly not a woman.

This is Duris's sixth film with Klapish, they work well together. Luchini is nicely comical character compete with a shrink (Maurice Benichou). Binoche joins the dance party (literally) and has the opportunity to explore her rarely used skills as comedienne, something she is gently good at. To Americans her indifference to unflattering shots is amazing. But it makes Elsie so real.

The film is well within the borderline of I love Paris, and if you like the city and the sketchy, so French way of portraying it, you will not be disappointed.



A Mars Distribution release of a Ce Qui Me Meut, Studio Canal, Studio Canal Image, France 2 Cinema production, in association with Une Etoile 4, with the participation of Canal Plus France, TPS Star. (International sales: Studiocanal, Paris.) Produced by Bruno Levy. Directed, written by Cedric Klapisch.

With: Juliette Binoche, Romain Duris, Fabrice Luchini, Albert Dupontel, Francois Cluzet, Karin Viard, Gilles Lellouche, Melanie Laurent, Zinedine Soualem, Julie Ferrier, Olivia Bonamy, Maurice Benichou, Sabrina Ouazani, Kingsley Kum Abang.