Dans Paris

Christophe Honoré's Dans Paris is an inspired retelling of Franny and Zooey. Franny has become a young French guy named Paul (an awesomely hairy Romain Duris), and her existential crisis is now a failed love affair (hey, c'est Paris). But in many other particulars—the benefits of constant prayer, the absence of a beloved elder sibling, the endless phone conversations—the story is the same. Paul has moved back in with his father after breaking up with his girlfriend. An intense, disjointed prologue relays the disintegration of Paul's relationship with an Eternal Sunshine-y stream of flashbacks. Perhaps they are also meant to show us that Paul was a player, because once he gets home and the film starts in earnest, the man is so depressed he can hardly move. His dad (Guy Marchand) is ill-equipped to deal with such darkness; the best he can do is cook up a sole and beg his son to eat. His brother Jonathan (Louis Garrel), the Grand High Goofball of the family, also tries to help without really knowing how. Digging deeper into the source material than recent Salinger-inspired movies—The Royal Tenenbaums, Igby Goes Down—Honoré ends up with a movie about the transcendence of sibling relationships. Paul and Jonathan look nothing alike. They fight, sometimes viciously. But they have read all the same children's books, they have mourned their dead sister together, and they conduct themselves as if they share a soul.