Dans Paris, Heartbeat Detector, and a rewatch: The Edge of Heaven

I haven't had the net in my current flat so a lack of entries. Also, possibly only coincidentally, a lack of new films. Only 2:

Dans Paris
dir. Christophe Honore
2006

Rather strange, a mixture of a portrait of a depressive and a New Wave film. Didn't really work for me, I was left confused by it. I watched the extras afterwards to try and get a handle on it: there's an interview with a director in which he says after making dark films he wanted to direct a lighter one, which I suppose he did. He talks of the influence of JD Salinger, who writes about similar themes but is always funny. I've read a lot of Salinger and this film is nothing like him!

Honore apparently wrote it for Romain Duris and Louis Garrel specifically, which makes you ponder the idea of lightness, as he cast Duris - a very powerful actor - as the depressed character. Duris is very good, as ever, and his story pulls down the "lightness". Garrel is great too as Duris' carefree younger brother. He says in an interview that Duris is the Brando - an actor "on the floor, with the world on his shoulders" and he, Garrel is the Jean-Pierre Leaud, "coming from the clouds". A nice way of putting it.

Heartbeat Detector
dir. Nicolas Klotz
2007

Quite why this film has received rave reviews is beyond me. It's adapted from a novel and basically can't deal with the ideas that are evident in the novel. The director is neither clever enough nor skilled enough to manage big ideas about language and the Holocaust and so creates a complete mess of a film: no cinematic verve, no idea of pacing, no idea how to tell a story, no idea how to manage ideas, nothing. The only good thing in it is Mathieu Amalric and the presence on the soundtrack of Schubert.