Here, cult director Luc Besson shows us how even a French arthouse film shot in black & white can be just as unbearably sappy as the lamest Hollywood hackjob you can think of. This is pretty bad. It’s about a sad sack (Jamel Debbouze) who’s deep in debt to the type of guys who aren’t above throwing you off the top of the Eiffel Tower if you don’t pay up. He can’t pay up. So he decides to commit suicide. While poised at the edge of a bridge and ready to jump to a watery death, he finds a pretty blonde woman (Rie Rasmussen) also there at the bridge and alsoin the middle of a suicide attempt. She jumps, he rescues her, she spends the rest of the movie rescuing him by teaching him how to love himself, and I vomit all over my coffee table. Also, it turns out that she’s a literal angel sent from Heaven to save him. Super.
The unusual visual contrast between the two main characters is interesting—she’s a towering, leggy Aryan Amazon who looks at least 6’2″; he’s a dark little munchkin who can’t be much taller than 5’5″—if you’re into that, but the best thing about this movie is that Paris is shot quite beautifully in it by Besson’s usual cinematographer, Thierry Arbogast. Paris is shot beautifully in a LOT of things, though. Go look at some Eugene Atget photography and forget this film, I say.