April 29, 2007

Paris, je t'aime

One City. 10 Millions Hearts. One Love Story. One Film.

Through the neighbourhoods of Paris, love is veiled, revealed, imitated, sucked dry, reinvented, and awakened. A stunning line up of internationally renowned directors and actors rediscover the city of Paris in a collective work about love.
Ima, ai ni yukimasu (Be with You), by Nobuhiro Doi

Mio's death leaves husband Takumi and 6 year old son Yuji fending for themselves. Taku occasionally suffers fainting spells, is disorganized, and fears that his health hindered Mio's happiness. Yuji overheard relatives speculate that his delivery compromised her health, and he blames himself for her death. Mio left him a picture book in which she departs for "The Archive Star" but re-appears during the rainy season the following year, and he eagerly awaits her return. Taking a walk in the forest outside their house, Taku and Yuji find a woman sheltering from the rain and immediately accept her as Mio. She has no memory or sense of identity, but comes home to live with them anyway. She asks Taku how they met and fell in love, and he recounts a tale of years of missed chances starting in high school until she encouraged their marriage years later. As the rainy season nears its end, Yuji finds the "time capsule" he hid with his mother before her death. Mio's diary is inside, and its version of the romance holds the answers to the mystery.
The Namesake, by Mira Nair

Jumping between the equally colourful and vibrant cities of Calcutta and New York, THE NAMESAKE is a moving drama which follows the Ganguli family, who come to the U.S. from India in order to experience a world of limitless opportunities – only to be confronted with the perils and confusion of trying to build a meaningful life in a baffling new society.

On the heels of their arranged marriage, Ashoke and Ashima (Indian stars Irrfan Khan and Tabu) jet off from sweltering Calcutta to a wintry New York where they begin their new life together. Virtual strangers to one another and with Ashima now living in a new and very strange land, their relationship takes a positive turn when Ashima gives birth to a son. Under pressure to name him quickly, Ashoke settles on Gogol, after the famous Russian author – a name that serves as a link to a secret past and, Ashoke hopes, a better future.

As a first-generation American teenager, Gogol (Kal Penn) must learn to tread a razor-thin line between his Bengali roots and his American birthright in the search for his own identity. It’s a difficult journey, full of both comic and painfully revelatory consequences . . . until Gogol begins to see the links between the world his parents left behind and the new world that lies in front of him.
Jonathan Nasaw – Fear Itself

“Then a letter for Pender arrives at FBI headquarters. Dorie Bell is afraid. Last year she attended a phobia disorders convention in Las Vegas. Since then three attendees have died in strange circumstances… Carl Polander had acrophobia. Fear of heights. So why would he have jumped from the nineteenth floor of a building?... Mara Agajanian had haemophobia. Fear of blood. So how could she have cut her own wrists in the bathtub?... Kimberley Rosen had pnigophobia. Fear of suffocation. She was fished out of a canal – but there as no water in her lungs.Dorie herself suffers from prosoponophobia. Fear of masks. She suspects there may be a twisted killer on the loose. Someone who preys on people’s worst phobias. Someone who, quite literally, enjoys scaring his vitims to death.”


And a soft but nice paragraph:

“Then Dorie remembered something else, a parable her father once told her when she handy sold a painting in a year and was thinking about giving up and taking a straight job. It was about a man sentenced to death who promised the king that if his life was spared, within a year he would teach the king’s favourite horse to talk. His friends told him he was crazy, that he’d set himself an impossible task. But a year is a long time, he told them. A lot of things can happen in a year. The king could die. The horse could die. Or maybe – who knows? – maybe the horse will actually learn to talk."
Sophie Cunningham – Geography

So that is my story. Water runs throught it. So dreams and seasons and light. There is Hollywood and blood; once, twice, many times. There is family and friends. ‘Seinfield’ endend shortly before the last time I slept with Michael and the las episode was, appropriately, a disappointment. There are beatings and police, earthquakes and fires and, at the end, the dead of a princess. There is World Wide Web and planes connecting lovers and family together. There is also a fantasy that we live in a global village and distance makes no difference. It does make a difference, I learnt. Distance makes all the difference in the world.”