this is a very very weird movie with Ethan hawk and his magnifying eyeglasses. guess through his eye ware like what he told his little daughter: "don't do it, your eyes are as perfect as mine." maybe, i say maybe, that this guy's eyes or his eye ware could really enable him to see the dead and revive her from ashes and turned her into warm, lustful flesh, a ghost who could wash his hair and made love to him 'any time after 4:00pm", any time he felt lonely he could visit her, rang the bell on the front, went up the staircase, rang the door bell again, then when she opened it, he could walk in, embraced her with a long passionate kiss, then went to the bed.
in this weird film, Paris never made you feel lovely but senselessly cold, hopeless and helpless. those streets with cobble stones only echoed the walking dead, the losers, the daily struggling lower level Parisians, those naturalized citizens from Morocco, north Africa or where else they could sneak in and mess up the whole social structure of France. a pathetic American one-book writer with a vague past relationship to a pure french woman, then weird but also vague things happened, he left and back to America, then after 6 years separation, he came back trying to picking up the loss years of his growing up young daughter....blab, blab, and blab. fell asleep on the bus, all the luggage were stolen except his passport. so far, the screenplay still felt quite normal, then his journey to Paris became weirder and weirder, finally, a normal nostalgic odyssey gradually turned into a super nature goof ball, so goofy that a drama suddenly became a goddamn mess.
i definitely believe that the screenplay writer(s?), the director and the editor were exactly playing a practical joke on we stupid clueless audiences. they produced an actually not bad but serious enough decent film, but then at some point, they decided to turn a serious movie into a practical joke, and they were laughing their pants off when critics and viewers came out of the cinema with puzzled and troubled expressions, everybody's face with only one word: "WTF?!" on their faces. while these french goof-balls couldn't stop their guffaws, we viewers just heard they said behind our back: "Ce qu'il vous faut, ha ha! (Got you, ha ha!!)
in this weird film, Paris never made you feel lovely but senselessly cold, hopeless and helpless. those streets with cobble stones only echoed the walking dead, the losers, the daily struggling lower level Parisians, those naturalized citizens from Morocco, north Africa or where else they could sneak in and mess up the whole social structure of France. a pathetic American one-book writer with a vague past relationship to a pure french woman, then weird but also vague things happened, he left and back to America, then after 6 years separation, he came back trying to picking up the loss years of his growing up young daughter....blab, blab, and blab. fell asleep on the bus, all the luggage were stolen except his passport. so far, the screenplay still felt quite normal, then his journey to Paris became weirder and weirder, finally, a normal nostalgic odyssey gradually turned into a super nature goof ball, so goofy that a drama suddenly became a goddamn mess.
i definitely believe that the screenplay writer(s?), the director and the editor were exactly playing a practical joke on we stupid clueless audiences. they produced an actually not bad but serious enough decent film, but then at some point, they decided to turn a serious movie into a practical joke, and they were laughing their pants off when critics and viewers came out of the cinema with puzzled and troubled expressions, everybody's face with only one word: "WTF?!" on their faces. while these french goof-balls couldn't stop their guffaws, we viewers just heard they said behind our back: "Ce qu'il vous faut, ha ha! (Got you, ha ha!!)