Aw, Paris! The city of love! Aw, Paris, je taime! The compilation of some 18 short films all about the various sorts of love set in the city of love, Paris.

It’s definitely a nice change of pace to go to the movies and see a series of short films because if I see a bad feature length film, I’m squirming in my seat for 2+ hours. However, with a series of short films, where there are undoubtedly going to be a few I don’t like, I only have to wait 5 to 10 minutes and it’s on to the next one.

With Paris je t’aime, however, the good shorts FAR outweigh the bad shorts. What’s particularly great about these short films is they are directed by some great and well-known directors of feature-length films, so it’s very interesting to see what they do with the short film format. Throw in the broad wealth of on-screen talent used and you’ve got an entertaining experience at the movies.

I couldn’t find a list of the short films, so please forgive my memory while going over a few of the shorts as it’s been a few days since I saw Paris je t’aime. Quite a few, good and bad, still linger. The bad ones, I’m glad they were short. The good ones, some very well-done complete stories and some I wanted to go on longer and delve into deeper.

Since I like bad news first, I’ll start with a couple of the ones I didn’t like so much. The one I didn’t get at all, was the one with the traveling hair products salesman. It just didn’t seem to have any story to it at all and the characters were very bizarre. Another was the vampire one with Elijah Wood. It was okay, but something about the story was just off for me. It seemed more about style (ala Sin City) then substance.

The good ones. The first few were really good and were some of the ones I wanted to go on a little bit more. But the few that just really stick with me are the last one about the middle-aged woman experiencing Paris on her own … just a brilliant character study. The one with Natalie Portman where she’s a young acting student dating a blind student and you see their entire relationship from beginning to end with a little bit of a predictable twist, but a good solid short film none-the-less. The Coen brothers short film with Steve Buscemi is hilarious! And the one I think I liked the most … which in the beginning I thought “what the hell is this?” was the one with the mimes … yes, mimes in Paris. I mean how could you have a series of short films all set in Paris without one about mimes! It was a very charming short!

So Paris, je t’aime! Go check it out! It’s a very refreshing change of pace.