Juliette Binoche and Romain Duris in Paris

This week two films—Paris released in theatres, and Death Among Friends made for here! TV—show promise, but ultimately disappoint.
In CĂ©dric Klapisch’s Paris, the romantic city of lights begets mostly heartbreak. Cleverly edited together, this enjoyable, albeit slight film, presents a series of interconnected stories that unfold like a glossy French soap opera. 

Pierre (Romain Duris) is a dancer who has heart problems. Not relationship troubles, but a bad ticker that may end his life. His sister Élise (Juliette Binoche), a social worker, comes to care for him. She shops at the Rungis food market, where Jean (Albert Dupontel) and his ex-wife Caroline (Julie Ferrier) operate a stall. Meanwhile, Roland (Fabrice Luchini), a history professor, falls in love with a student Laetita (Melanie Laurent), and in another episode, Benoit (Kingsley Jum Abang) heads to Paris from Cameroon. 

Paris nimbly considers family and heritage, life and death, sex and the universe (of Paris), as it hopscotches between stories and arrondissements. From the top of the Eiffel Tower to the bowels of the city’s catacombs, Klapisch easily seduces viewers into the rhythm of Paris as well as the everyday characters’ everyday lives—from a rendezvous at a cafĂ© to shopping at a bakery.  

The film also boasts moments both comic—Roland telling his brother Philippe (François Cluzet) about a text he sent Laetitia—and sentimental—Pierre looking down on Parisian streets from his balcony that will charm viewers. 

But after the first engaging hour, Paris starts to get stupide, with an embarrassing scene of Élise trying to help Pierre get laid, or a silly animated dream sequence. Even the sudden death of a character feels like a cheap shot. Klapisch’s “Sieze the Day” message hits viewers over the head, repeatedly—and a song by that name on the soundtrack doesn’t help. 

Yet Francophiles will likely ignore Paris’ various flaws, and swoon over the adorable Duris and/or Binoche’s lovely performance. C’est la vie.
Death Among Friends is a risible “thriller” that is devoid of any thrills. 

 The story opens with Edwin Vaster (Kirby Morrow) forwarding an incriminating email onto friends in his Rio de Janeiro hotel room. Edwin is soon murdered by Macklin (David Millbern), whom viewers know is a baddie and an idiot because he speaks Spanish in Brazil.  

At Edwin’s funeral, his lesbian sister Romy (Nicholle Tom) is consoled by various friends, including Serena (Holly Dignard), a would-be girlfriend.

Romy also invites Macklin back to the Vaster family mansion for dinner, unaware that he is working for Brecher (Margot Kidder), and determined to destroy the email at any cost. 

Death Among Friends skates by on the thinnest of plots, and the dialogue is often unintentionally hilarious. Serena’s excuse for being late to Edwin’s funeral has something to do with covering the little league tryouts for the local paper. And bad puns abound, such as one about Edwin’s “shocking” death—he was electrocuted in a bathtub. 

The script is also fully of hoary thriller clichĂ©s. There’s a bad rainstorm that washes the streets out. The power is cut. Bodies appear suddenly by windows. None of it is suspenseful, and much of it is stupid. The only novelty in the entire enterprise is that the Vaster butler, Mr. D (William B. Davis) didn’t do it. 

The characters also appear to be pretty dumb. One leaves his car window open during the rainstorm. Another takes a roast out of the oven with his bare hands. Such sloppy, lazy plotting provides amusing distractions since Death Among Friends has little else to recommend it. But it’s hardly camp.
The direction, by Ron Oliver (who helms here TV!’s enjoyable Donald Strachey mysteries) lacks style. Oliver seems to be going through the motions this time around, framing scenes so deliberately that every would-be jolt—a man hiding behind a car hood, or a shadowy figure entering a room—is devoid of suspense. 

There is no sexual tension either. The lesbian storyline between Romy and Serena is reduced to a chaste kiss, but their suggested relationship is more credible than the one between bickering married couple Tara (Olivia Cheng) and Chris (Nelson Wong). 

But at least Cheng and Wong try to inject some life into their characters, spouting their clumsy lines with energy. Tom and Dignard do little more than run around and look pretty. Moreover, most of the supporting cast seems to be sleepwalking through their roles—particularly Margot Kidder who has exactly three superfluous scenes. Millbern makes such an ineffective villain there is no interest in watching if he’s foiled, as he is plenty self-destructive. 

In the final analysis, Death Among Friends is dead on arrival.