There’s something magical about the small things to be discovered in the big city. When we think of Milwaukee, it’s not about the majesty of the Milwaukee Art Museum or the surging crowds of Summerfest, but it’s about the smaller moments that made that night so special, that day so fun. In much the same way, New York is not just about the Empire State Building, but about that small, out-of-the-way French diner, and Paris is not just about the Eifel Tower, but about that random conversation in the café or that unexpected scene on one of the city’s side streets.

There’s something romantic about the big city, because with so many people in such a small space, something unexpected and joyful is bound to cross your path one day. And this is the precise mentality that makes “Paris, je t’aime” such a breath of fresh air.

An experiment put together by producers Tristan Carne and Emmanuel Benbihy, “Paris, je t’aime” is an amalgamation of 18 short films, all about Paris, all featuring different performers and all constructed by a different director, pulled from the ranks of today’s most exciting visionaries - from “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou’s” Joel and Ethan Cohen, “Run Lola Run’s” Tom Tykwer, “Red-Eye’s” Wes Craven, “Elephant’s” Gus Van Sant and even “Sideways’” Alexander Payne.

As one might naturally expect, many of the short films, all limited to a 5-minute duration, have romantic undertones. There’s the angry car driver who finds a parking space and literally has love drop onto the sidewalk next to his car. There’s the blind college student who one day overhears an actress rehearsing her lines, and falls in love with the woman he cannot see. There’s the man waiting at the café for his wife, ready to announce his desire for a divorce, who realizes the decision is not as easy as he was originally thinking.

But many of the segments are content with solely being about the unlikely lives that cross paths in the midst of this sprawling Mecca. In one memorable short, a young boy ditches his sexist friends who are calling out to women on the street to help a young Muslim girl with her dropped books. In another story, an out-of-work immigrant ailing after an attack on the street shares a brief moment with an EMT trying to treat his stab wound. Another watches a young mother, played powerfully by Oscar nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno (“Maria, Full of Grace”) as she drops her kid off at child care, and then takes an arduous journey – train connecting to train, subway to bus, and back to train – to serve as nanny for an upper-class baby out in the suburbs.

These are powerful stories that start in a place of superficiality – just a woman on the subway, just a kid hanging out with his friends causing trouble – but then reveals some of the humanity, some of the heart beating behind these faces in the random sea of humanity flowing through Paris on a daily basis.

My two favorite shorts happen to be directed by American directors – obviously, my bias is showing through – but also start in a place of humor and end with an appreciation for the random beauty of city life. In the short by Joel and Ethan Cohen, Steve Buscemi plays a random American tourist in the Paris subway system, waiting for a train that never seems to come, who gets caught up in a lover’s spat all the while being heckled by a young child and gawked at by a subway performer. And in the short by Alexander Payne, a tourist from Kansas narrates her own tale in poorly-spoken French. Both a bit pathetic in the way she sticks out as an outsider, but a bit beautiful in the way she has decided to experience an adventure, once can see the same sensitivity to characters, and the fine line between humor and sadness, that Payne has so masterfully juggled in “Election,” “About Schmidt,” and “Sideways.”

So how does one evaluate “Paris, je t’aime” as a whole? It’s an entertaining mix that flows fluidly, filled with short stories that we want more of, and characters we wish we could learn about. It evokes the feeling of a city full of stories, all waiting to be told, and successfully hints at the fact that every face you see, every person you may walk by, all have an interesting story just waiting to share. In Payne’s short, we even get a sense for the random moments that make someone fall in love with a city – sort of like the random asides here that made me fall in love with this movie.

by: Steven Snyder steven@zertinet.com, Published 2007-06-06