We went into "Paris Calligrammes" with perhaps misguided expectations. We were expecting a romp with artists through the French capital during the heady '60s culminating in the May 1968 protests and some thoughts on how that shaped the era. We never made it past 1966.
This is a memoir from German artist Ulrike Ottinger, who parachuted into the Paris literary and art scene in the early '60s, joining a circle of artistes, writers and poets who orbited around the Calligrammes bookstore. However, the production here is leaden, the pace is slow, her narration is dull, and the names she drops fly by quickly, few of them recognizable. At least to me. Here's a good litmus test. At one point, Ottinger references the staging of a Jean Genet play and notes that it featured three "famous" actors, and then she names Madeleine Renaud, Maria Casares and Jean-Pierre Granval. If none of those names ring a bell, then the rest of this won't resonate, I'm afraid.
There's an audience for this, certainly. But you'd have to appreciate the extreme inside baseball to devote more than two hours to Ottinger's valentine to her youth.
Title: PARIS CALLIGRAMMES
Running Time: 130 MIN
Elapsed Time at Plug Pull: 50 MIN
Portion Watched: 38%
My Age at Time of Viewing: 58 YRS, 5 MOS.
Average Male American Lifespan: 78.5 YRS.
Watched/Did Instead: Went to bed to read myself to sleep.
Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 88-1
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