Paris 36

Paris 36

120 Minutes

My blind faith that everything French is good was first tested by the sight of a naked Gérard Depardieu and subsequently by La Vie en Rose. Thanks to Paris 36, I now know what Job went through. If perhaps this sounds a little harsh, please note that this Francophile spent the first 30 minutes of Paris 36 developing an aversion to the French language, to the Eiffel Tower, to everything French, plotting my escape and trying to articulate a good excuse to tell my editor. I settled on a sudden attack of chronic diarrhea but, as I was sneaking out, a voice ordered me to stay and suffer for the next 90 minutes in order to save you, dearest moviegoer, from the excruciatingly painful experience that is Paris 36.

Paris 36 is a messy, sappy quasi-musical that peddles its superficial, clichéd jumble with a sickly strain of unearned sentimentality that might appeal to certain geriatric audiences which nap in between scenes or to those who consider “arthouse” to be synonymous with no explosions or car chases. The movie is custom made for a petit bourgeois mindset that would easily settle for its bogus comforts. To say that Paris 36 stinks because it tries to do too much and does nothing well would be generous since it makes the movie sound ambitious. It’s most definitely not. Not only doesn’t director Barratier even pretend to give much thought to any of the incongruous elements he throws together, he resorts to every schmaltzy cliché associated with French culture and uses them to grating, embarrassing effect. Barratier crams his superficially conceived, trite plot and subplots like a contestant at The Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog-Eating Contest. Thankfully, I had Tums in my purse. Warning: You’ll need a good bowel movement after you read the next paragraph. (Please excuse the merde leit motif running through this review. It’s completely unintentional.)

Paris 36 is supposed to be a portrait of friendship, brotherhood, young love, social strife, anti-Semitism, paternal devotion and the French Popular Front in the 1930s. Amid roiling tensions between communist factions and fascist political thugs shortly after Léon Blum’s rise to power, a group of unemployed workers band together to put on a show to keep their beloved Chansonia theater alive. At the center of this conflict is Pigoil (Gérard Jugnot), a baby-doll cute stagehand with puppy dog eyes who dreams of traveling to the sea with Jojo (Maxence Perrin), his accordion prodigy son. Aided by meanie social services, his cheating wife wins custody and takes off with Jojo. The theater is taken over and shut down by fascist loan shark Galapiat (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu), leaving Pigoil unemployed and destitute. Meanwhile, a romance between stagehand, actor and commie agitator Milou (Clovis Cornillac) and singing ingénue Douce (a pretty but charmless Nora Arnezeder) is complicated when union-hating Galapiat takes her under his wing. What’s the matter? Don’t like these subplots? Wait a couple of minutes. You’ll get another one and Nazis too. After being booed off the stage, lame, no-talent but much too lovable comic Jacky (Kad Merad) trades his soul for a stage career when he agrees to perform Jew-hating stand-up comedy for Galapiat’s sieg-heiling buddies. Paris 36 can do nothing but barrel through all of this as superficially as possible; everything whizzes by at light speed and nothing registers.

I guess Paris and its 20 existing arrondissements were not sufficiently French, so Barratier insisted on setting his story in the fictional Faubourg and shooting most of it in the Czech Republic. The sets, composed of one uninteresting synthetic period element on top of another (toybox streets, sidewalk cafes, charming alleys, electric marquees), are designed to look as quaint, fake and sanitized as possible. The entire cast is broadly melodramatic in a shamelessly manipulative manner, with Jugnot leading the way. The last act really pours on the syrup. An accordion prodigy may be adorable; a prodigy reuniting with his father while serenading him with accordion music (I’m not making this up) is even cuter. The movie is so excited about showing off its protagonists’ theatrical triumph (including that of an old composer and orchestra conductor who has spent the last 20 years alone with his radio) that it winds up looking more like a music video than a stage show. They become wildly successful and live happily ever after. Oh, wait, not yet. No nostalgia piece is complete without a brutal murder and the protagonist spending 15 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit.

Paris 36 is a childish, frivolous period piece that seems respectable by virtue of arthouse distribution but it’s barely different and no more thoughtful from any low-rent Hollywood movie. It’s certainly more dishonest. Job’s Maker subjected him to many horrendous calamities, but I’m willing to bet that had He assaulted him with the excessive amount of French kitsch and accordion music in Paris 36, he would have cursed Him and pleaded for more boils.

by Teri Carson