DRAMA PARIS (15) 130min 00
Having explored Barcelona in Pot Luck and St Petersburg and London in Russian Dolls. writer/director Cedric Klapisch comes back to the French capital with this sentimental ‘choral' drama. Romain Duris. Klapisch's perennial leading man. plays cabaret dancer Pierre. who quits work when he discovers he has a potentially fatal heart disease reguiring a transplant. His social worker sister Elise (Juliette Binoche) and her three young children move in to his apartment to help look after Pierre. while he begins to reconsider his life's priorities.
Klapisch has always favoured ensemble films and Paris is no exception, its intersecting storylines involving characters whom Elise and Pierre enc0unter from different milieux and social classes: stall-holders at the local market. a university history professor Roland (Fabrice Luchini) besotted by a young female student (Melanie Laurent), Roland‘s architect brother (Francois Cluzet) and a Cameroonian immigrant.
If anything. the filmmaker crams in too many sub-plots. flitting between the experiences of his fictional creations. and various strands. such as the May-December romance. fail to ring true. In attempting to contrast visually the old and the new. Klapisch offers up a tourist-friendly view of the City of Lights, including such familiar landmarks as the Eiffel Tower. Pere Lachaise cemetery. the Moulin Rouge and Montmartre's Sacre-Coeur. Much inferior to Klapisch‘s earlier paen to Paris, When the Cat's Away.
(William Thomas) I Fl/lTl/TOUSG, Edinburgh from Fri 25 Jul.
46 THE LIST 17—31 Jul 2008
DRAMA
COMEDY BABY MAMA (12A) 99min 0000
Each generation gets the Mary Tyler Moore it deserves; as creator and star of NBC’s 30-Rock sitcom, Tina Fey has earned herself the right to be 2008’s funny-girl. And even though writer/director Michael McCullers seems intent on broadening Fey’s appeal for her first starring role, Baby Mama is a baby-boom comedy which consistently goes for and gets big laughs.
In a role that’s no great stretch from 30-Rock’s Lisa Lemon, Fey plays Kate Holbrook, a 37-year old executive at a Philadelphia health-food company. When her doctor bluntly tells her that he ‘doesn’t like the shape’ of her uterus, Kate engages the surrogate services of baby mama Angie Ostowist (Amy Poehler), a trailer trash Gwen Stefani-wannabe who arrives complete with her dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks boyfriend Carl (Dax Shepard) in tow. To Kate’s initial delight, Angie gets pregnant soon after agreeing to carry the child, but when Angie moves in with Kate, the girls’ fractious relationship disintegrates into outright feuding.
Making good on Fey’s previous cinematic success (Mean Girls), Baby Mama derives considerable comic
SUMMER HOURS (12A) 102mm .000
In summer sunshine in the countryside north of Paris it's the 75th birthday of widowed matriarch Helene (Edith Scob), and attending the celebrations are her three children. UlllVGfSlly economist Frederic (Charles Berling). designer Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) and China-based businessman Jeremie (Jeremie Renter), together With the grandchildren and the elderly housekeeper. Helene is worried about what wrll happen to both the house and the collection of valuable artworks belonging to her late uncle. And when she passes away a couple of months later it's up to her offspring to decide collectively what to do with their artistic inheritance.
Assayas isn't tied down to a conventional three-act structure in his storytelling. Dividing Summer Hours into chapters separated by fades to black. he drops in on significant moments in his characters” lives. The film's themes — the impact of globalisation upon our sense of personal and national identity. how different generations deal with their past. the value we attach to art — appear to emerge naturally from the drama. Shot with an appropriately light. fluid touch by Eric Gautier. and convincingly acted by the ensemble cast. Summer Hours reminds one of Jean Renoir‘s dictum that 'everyone has their reasons' and is a fine companion piece to Assayas’ earlier Late August. Ear/y September. (Tom Dawson) I Selected release from Fri 18 Jul. See interview. page 46.
punch from the comic timing of her double act with Poehler. Their easy rapport breathes life into the script’s cliches, notably in an amusingly gauche attempt by the girls to represent themselves in court, where Poehler repeatedly addresses the judge as ‘your majesty’ and acknowledges his responses with a deferential ‘aye-aye-sir’.
But Baby Mama’s breakout success is a team effort. As staff writer for Saturday Night Live, Fey was able to call for support in the form of uber-producer Lorne Michaels, Michael McMullen, writer of two Austin Powers films, plus SNL regulars including Poehler and Will Forte. And there’s note-perfect support from big stars, with Sigourney Weaver shining as a dry-witted but remarkably fertile surrogacy agent, Greg Kinnear as a dim-but-nice juice bar manager, and even Steve Martin flourishes as her hippy-dippy boss, New Age- casualty Barry.
Weakened by a copout ending, Baby Mama isn’t likely to be the stand-out item on Fey’s already impressive comic CV. Yet, even if this mama don’t knock you out, it’s still a welcome relief from the stale locker-room humour of most male-dominated US comedy imports. (Eddie Harrison)
I General release from Fri :5 Jul. See feature. page l6.