Vanessa Paradis – WilfridWong.com

Vanessa Paradis Divinidylle Tour – Intimate And Fun, Musically Satisfying

“Vanessa Paradis Divinidylle Tour” is more than a live concert recording. It is a documentary of her 2007/8 music tour in France. There are behind-the-scene footages narrated through the interviews of Vanessa and her band. These footages offer rare insights – especially for those who live outside of France – on the music creation journey of the music album “Divinidylle”, which in my opinion, is her best work to date. I am in love with “Divinidylle” (read more on the previous review here); and I cannot remember where I bought the Blu-ray version of this documentary (either in Paris or Hong Kong). It is a must-have if you are her music fan. Her previous concert recording was released back in 2001, “Vanessa Paradis Au Zenith”, which I too have both the DVD and the CD for that recording. This recent recording is taken mostly from the concert at Bercy in Paris. The stadium looked huge when I attended Mylene Farmer’s concert back in the early 2000. It still looks huge when I watch it on TV.

While Vanessa may have released a few music albums (her debut was released when she was 14), she may be more well known as an actress or a model. I can relate to her guitarist Matthieu Chedid when he mentioned that working with Vanessa is like working with an icon, instead of a musician even though she is a good musician. Matthieu, someone looks to me as the driving force behind the tour. Not in a overshadowing sense, but to support Vanessa with full devotion. He got her into doing something simple and fun on stage, like playing the guitar or the drums. On stage, Matthieu – who releases his solo album and has co-worked on Paradis’s “Divinidylle” album – is on fire with his guitar. Together with the rest of the talented band members, they have added vigor to the songs, transforming the easy listening numbers into songs that move your feet, make you wave your hands in the air (like to me, for instance). Each musician has his intimate moment with Vanessa – musically speaking. This live documentary contains 24 songs, presented in a lengthy 2 hours 30 minutes recording.

Matthieu describes Vanessa as iconic, fun, and accurate [in tone] and has good timing. I think the acoustic video recording below sums that up well.

Heartbreaker – A Quality French Romantic Comedy

If you love romantic comedy, you ought not to miss this one. As far as the story goes, there are three categories of women in a relationship: (1) happy, (2) knowingly unhappy, and (3) unknowingly unhappy. The main character played by Romain Duris together with his sister and his brother-in-law have made a profession out of breaking up relationships in the last category. The method is seduction. The only rule is that they do not break up couples in love. Then comes a day when Team Heartbreaker is desperate for money and they are hired by the bride-to-be’s dad to break up a seemingly perfect couple. That is when Romain Duris meets Vanessa Paradis.

I have been following some of Romain Duris’s work since the day I watched his sci-fi movie “Peut-être (1999)” in Paris, which includes the more well-known films (in this part of the world) “The Spanish Apartment (2002)” and “The Russian Doll (2005)”. He is one versatile actor and there is a good range of emotion in “Heartbreaker” for him to shine. As for Vanessa Paradis, most of the time she plays it cool so I cannot say much about her acting. At the age of 37 and a mother of two, she is still stunning. And she does not wear excessive make-up either. Pure natural beauty. I have been a fan of her music career. It is my first time seeing her on big screen, which I am glad that I did.

As far as the movie goes, there are plenty of quality comedy from the beginning till the end. And there is also a fair amount of drama. What does quality comedy mean? Well, you know how forgettable most comedies are? When you walk out of the theater long after you have watched “Heartbreaker”, chances are, you would still remember some of the scenes and still have a good laugh thinking about them. Speaking as such, I still remember some of the scenes in “Peut-être (1999)”. Filmed largely at Monaco, which we have recently visited, that is probably another reason why we love “Heartbreaker”.