![]() She and Nikolai end up in a semi-romantic relationship despite her energetic efforts to keep the Russians from turning her living quarters into their personal thoroughfare. ![]() Rationalizing this thievery, they claim to be entitled to this plunder because they “held back the Tartar-Mongols for 200 years, giving France time to evolve.” Funny as that line is, it is not very hard to imagine Paris winning a Darwinian contest as the most highly evolved of all cities.Īs the Russians pass in and out of their own apartment, they have to tromp through another apartment on the Parisian side, belonging to an exasperated young French woman sculptor. Afraid that the magical window will soon close up again, the Russians try to drag anything they can get their hands on through the window back to Petersburg, even a Citroën. While the Parisian populace looks on bemused, the Russians get into comical mischief amidst the local color: the bateau mouche, organ grinders, brasseries, Montmartre, and even a ritzy private bar that turns out to be a nudist club. Various little whimsical misadventures ensue. And age-old churches of great beauty attest to freedom of religion – “Such churches, and they don’t even believe in God,” comments one of the Russians. The Russians perceive Paris as a huge outdoor market overflowing with fresh fruits and vegetables, but seemingly having no customers in line. Like Alice through the looking glass, the Russians have entered a French version of wonderland, full of bounty. In their besotted state, they take a while to realize the magical truth: this city through the window is not gloomy and impoverished Petersburg, but beautiful and prosperous Paris. The amazed residents, who have been drinking all night, then stagger out the window and down the fire escape to a lower building and finally to the street below. A search of the dwelling reveals a heretofore unknown window in the back of a closet. Equally mysterious is how the cat could have reentered the apartment without coming through the door. The pet of a former resident, it has returned to the apartment uncommonly well fed and content, despite the prevailing economic deprivations. Just when all seems bleakest, fate takes a hand in the form of a black cat. A teacher of “aesthetics” (i.e., music and dance) on the verge of losing his job, Nikolai shares an apartment with nearly a dozen other residents. One of the street musicians turns out to be the story’s lead character: Nikolai Nikolayevich (portrayed by Serguej Dontsov), perpetually optimistic, continually beaten upon by circumstances. These are hard times indeed for the Workers’ Paradise. It turns out to be a vodka line, and there isn’t even any vodka left. A motley crew of hapless musicians and street performers are seen trying to cheer up citizens in what appears to be a breadline. The story in Window begins in a gray, gloomy, unspecified Russian city, later identified as St. As might be expected in a work by a bicultural director, there is tremendous ambiguity present, with a point of view vacillating between propagandistic enthusiasm and wistful regret. The post–Cold War world no longer has an Iron Curtain to block the East’s view of the West, and Paris once again can play its age-old role as the most seductive sight in that view. That is significant in itself, symbolic of a new Europe in which barriers fall every day and unusual alliances become the norm. ![]() Directed by Russian émigré Yuri Mamin, it was a multinational joint production with both French and Russian dialogue. Window to Paris arrived in theaters first, in 1995. Strikingly similar in structure and certain subject matter but otherwise unrelated, these films gave moviegoers around the world two different perspectives on the same scene, modern Paris in the throes of exciting yet challenging change. Two films of the late 1990s seemed especially to capture the temper of the time: Window to Paris ( Fenêtre vers Paris) and When the Cat’s Away ( Chacun cherche son chat). The pleasures and pitfalls of cultural change, collectivism, and – oh yes, an unusual pair of catsĪs the new century begins, it is now possible to look back on how Paris was presented – or presented itself, perhaps – in French cinema as the twentieth century drew to a close.
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