Sous les toits de Paris (2007) Reviews

• Old age...

  shatguintruo2009-08-12

  By the hands of Director Hiner Saleem the actor Michel Piccoli - in the role of Marcel - gives us another one of his memorable performances. The movie approaches a subject that scares many: old age and death. Marcel who lives in the last floor of a declining building in a Paris suburb, has for constant company an immigrant neighbor (Amar). In his floor lives a drug addicted - in the beginning of old age - whose end it is expected: death (or suicide?) from overdose. Marcel has at times, an infantile behavior: however he laughs at the friend (Amar) who already cannot swim in the adults pool and only goes to the child's pool to wet his feet, however he puts his fingers in his mouth or asks for silence, blanket on the shoulders, like playing "hide-and-seek" with friends and suddenly is discovered by another child (metaphoric figure:play "hide and-seek" with death?...). Marcel has a friend, Thérèse (Mylène Demongeot) who works in a restaurant near by and tries to minimize his suffering, however providing a fan, however buying with her scarce incomes an environment heater... The camera, most of the times, stands static, capturing wonderfully the scenery: whether in the only room, divided only by curtains, whether in the corridor, in which a close-up details a sink with a slow-leakage faucet, as to pronounce the rhythm of the lives that are drained there... As a complement, a soundtrack that at sometimes sounds glad and other sounds like a very sad music... To complete the excellent scenic composition, lightning that illuminates the room through one and tiny window, from where at far one glimpses "the roof of Paris" and sometimes the water of the rain that drains from the glass, tracing drawings as if were veins and arteries pulsating from that body which waits only for death... From 1 to 10 I vote: 10 (masterpiece).

  More

• Chamber Music

  writers_reign2007-12-22

  Not a lot happens in this one. The setting is mostly what in Paris they call les chambres de bonnes, the tiny, stifling rooms at the top of what were once large family homes where the maids lived. Today they're often occupied by students or poor young people but Michel Piccoli doesn't meet any of those criteria, he is, in fact, approaching the end of a long life which he measures out via his friend Maurice Benichou, a loving companion Mylene Demongeot, and a much younger girl Marie Kremer. They weave in and out of each others lives like a mosaic in slow motion, leaving the stifling rooms to visit the swimming baths or in Demongeot's case to sling hash in a greasy spoon. There's lots of humanity and great acting on display but don't take a whoopee cushion.

  More