Aïssa Maïga in “Place des Fêtes,” a short film directed by Oliver Schmitz in “Paris Je T’Aime.” Credit Frédérique Barraja/First Look International

“Paris Je T’Aime,” a mosaic of 18 miniatures, each set in a different location in the City of Light, is a cinematic tasting menu consisting entirely of amuse-bouches. After two hours of such tidbits the palate is sated. But if there is no need for a main course, you still leave feeling vaguely disappointed at not being served one.

The movie could be described as a cinematically literate travel brochure: The Eiffel Tower sparkles, the parks are lush and green, and the banks of the Seine are an inviting lovers’ rendezvous. But the Paris we see is not so prettified that it looks and feels unreal, and the pace is hectic; this is a whirlwind tour.

The directors’ credits for this deluxe sampler come from all over: France (Olivier Assayas, Sylvain Chomet) of course, but also Brazil (Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas), Spain (Isabel Coixet), Japan (Nobuhiro Suwa), Mexico (Alfonso Cuarón) and Germany (Tom Tykwer). The United States is most heavily represented, with shorts by Alexander Payne, Gus Van Sant, the Coen Brothers, Richard LaGravenese and Wes Craven.

Among the international cast of actors serving up the delicacies are Natalie Portman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Fanny Ardant, Elijah Wood, Nick Nolte, Bob Hoskins, Juliet Binoche, Gena Rowlands, Steve Buscemi, Gérard Depardieu and Ben Gazzara.

Most of the vignettes flow into one another, as though the stories are all leading somewhere, which they don’t really do. The simpler stories are generally more effective than the elaborate ones. In the Coen brothers’ sharp little comedy “Tuileries,” set in a station of the Paris Métro, a nervous American tourist (Mr. Buscemi), guidebook in hand, lands in trouble by not following its advice to avoid eye contact. Observing a lovers’ quarrel on the opposite platform, he is verbally harassed by the young man; later the couple cross to his side and thoroughly humiliate him. Mr. Buscemi, who speaks not a word, uses his wide, buggy eyes and elastic features like a silent clown to register shades of discomfort.

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In “Loin du 16ème,” written and directed by Mr. Salles and Ms. Thomas, a struggling immigrant mother leaves her baby in a nursery and journeys to the heart of Paris to work as a nanny for a wealthy family. She soothes the peevish infant in her care with the same refrain she sang to her own child hours earlier.

In Ms. Coixet’s “Bastille,” which compares caretaking to passion, a husband (Sergio Castellitto) is about to ask his wife of many years (Miranda Richardson) for a divorce when she bursts into tears and announces she is dying of leukemia. In Oliver Schmitz’s “Place des Fêtes,” a young medic (Aïssa Maïga) has a profound encounter with an immigrant (Seydou Boro) from Lagos who is dying on a street corner after being stabbed by a hoodlum. Mr. Craven’s “Père-Lachaise” observes a bickering couple, engaged to be married, who break up and make up in front of Oscar Wilde’s grave with a little help from Wilde’s sympathetic ghost.

In “Quartier Latin” Mr. Gazzara and Ms. Rowlands play an about-to-divorce couple exchanging sniping words in jocular tones; you feel the anger that can’t be camouflaged. Written by Ms. Rowlands and directed by Frédéric Auburtin and Mr. Depardieu, who has a tiny role as a restaurant owner, it is a gem of multilayered acting.

In the lovely final story, “14ème Arrondissement,” directed by Mr. Payne, Margo Martindale plays a middle-aged postal worker from Denver alone in Paris on her dream vacation. Her voice-over, an epistolary interior monologue delivered in a French spoken with an amusingly flat American twang, describes a happy-sad epiphany.

These stories are the most satisfying pieces in the anthology. Other selections stumble over themselves in their attempts to be original. Christopher Doyle’s “Porte de Choisy,” in which a salesman of hair products visits a Chinese beauty parlor, is a colorful but convoluted spoof of martial arts and television commercials. Mr. Chomet’s “Tour Eiffel” is the kind of mime show that only the French could entirely take to their hearts, and Mr. Suwa’s “Place des Victoires” is an awkward supernatural cowboy fantasy with Willem Dafoe on horseback. The biggest misfire, Vincenzo Natali’s “Quartier de la Madeleine,” is a romantic horror fantasy starring Elijah Wood as a besotted vampire lover that is photographed in muted tones — except for the blood.

For this kind of omnibus movie a success rate of two out of three is a pretty high batting average. There are no home runs, however, only doubles, singles and coy little bunts.

“Paris Je T’Aime” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has sexual situations.


Opens today in Manhattan.

Short films directed by Olivier Assayas, Frédéric Auburtin and Gérard Depardieu, Gurinder Chadha, Sylvain Chomet, Joel and Ethan Coen, Isabel Coixet, Wes Craven, Alfonso Cuarón, Christopher Doyle, Richard LaGravenese, Vincenzo Natali, Alexander Payne, Bruno Podalydès, Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, Oliver Schmitz, Nobuhiro Suwa, Tom Tykwer and Gus Van Sant; from an original idea by Tristan Carné and a feature film concept by Emmanuel Benbihy; in French and English, with English subtitles; music by Pierre Adenot; produced by Claudie Ossard and Mr. Benbihy; released by First Look Pictures. Running time: 120 minutes.

WITH: Fanny Ardant, Juliette Binoche, Seydou Boro, Steve Buscemi, Sergio Castellitto, Willem Dafoe, Gérard Depardieu, Marianne Faithfull, Ben Gazzara, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Bob Hoskins, Aïssa Maïga, Margo Martindale, Emily Mortimer, Nick Nolte, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Natalie Portman, Miranda Richardson, Gena Rowlands, Ludivine Sagnier, Barbet Schroeder, Rufus Sewell, Gaspard Ulliel, Elijah Wood and Li Xin.

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