Remember how I wrote that I didn’t much care for anthology films after watching Amores perros? Well, this is yet another anthology film except that it does things right. This is a collection of no less than eighteen short films with a total length of about two hours, each of them shot by a different director and cast, some of whom are pretty famous celebrities. What they have in common is that they’re all set in Paris and have something to do with love of one kind or another.

Eighteen short films is too many to cover of course and since they average only about six to seven minutes each, it’s not like there’s a whole lot to say about them. So just restricting my comments to the more notable ones, I’d say my favorite of the lot is Tuileries by the Coel brothers and starring Steve Buscemi. It’s just a single scene set in a Parisian subway station but makes for a wonderful example of how you can tell a complete story with elements of humor, romance and violence while alluding to the French predilection for public displays of affection. Also great is Sylvain Chomet’s Tour Eiffel which despite its title is actually a cute story about a family of mimes. If you’ve watched this director’s animated features, such as L’illusioniste, you already know to expect his fantastic creativity and playful imagery.

Naturally, there are also films that tell more serious stories. The best of these is in my opinion Loin du 16e by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas about a young immigrant who lives in the outskirts of Paris and must leave her own baby before dawn everyday and commute a long distance to her babysitter job in the center of the city. Quais de Seine by Paul Mayeda Berges and Gurinder Chadha deserves a mention for trying to convey a sense of how Muslim women who choose to wear the hijab in France can be a positive thing but is a bit too on the nose about it. The saddest of these stories is easily the ironically named Place des fêtes by Oliver Schmitz about a Nigerian man who confesses his love while he lays dying.

Then there are the films that are just awful. I was looking forward to watching the submission by Christopher Doyle but as my wife noted, his Porte de Choisy feels more like a music video than anything  else with nothing resembling a coherent story. Since it features a mostly Asian cast, it also seems to lack any real connection to Paris. Another piece that feels completely out of place is Quartier de la Madeleine by Vincenzo Natali which is a straightforward horror story and not even a terribly original one.

My main complaint about this collection is that too many of these films present Paris from the point of view of Americans. By my count at least half a dozen of them include at least one American character who speaks predominantly English or really poor French. I would have loved more diversity and find it frustrating that even non-American directors like Olivier Assayas and Tom Tykwer chose to make stories about Americans. That’s why I’m also quite fond of Bastille, with a story about a man who is having an affair but falls in love with his wife again after he discovers that she is dying. Despite being made by Spanish director Isabel Coixet, it feels the most French of all of the stories here to me.

Overall, I still greatly enjoyed this anthology and got a thrill out of recognizing all those landmarks. There are definitely more hits than misses and each film is so short that even if you dislike one, there’s only a short wait until you get to next one and it’s fun to see if you can recognize the director and actors of each segment.