The film covers a variety of stories, sometimes completely unconnected. There's a careworker visiting her elder clients, there's old footage of people's parents reminiscing about their journeys to Paris, there's an interview with a writer (or rather, a conversation between director and the writer that served as her inspiration),scenes of a hunt, some priests reading some king's last words to an audience in a grand church, part of a film in a local museum about deported Jews, kids in the banlieues rolling down a hill on cardboard. Some scenes are funny, others tender, others (such as the church scene and the hunt scene) so unsympathetic and dull I don't know why the director filmed or included them. While I liked her ambition - I've never seen a film attempt to include so many social locations - it seemed disjointed and overly long and ultimately dragged.

This doc seems a bit unfocused, following a variety of people living on the edges of the Parisian metropolis. It's difficult to grasp if you don't know a bit about this region, where cultural diversity is obvious but cultural mixing is not. As such, the only thread guiding the film is the commuter train RER B, which we see more or less prominently during each segment as the director follows the train line showing glimpses of locals' lives along it.

I found the film hard to follow as first, even though I come from the place featured (which helps me understand the thread of the RER, for example); the movie almost looks like a anthology film. After thinking about it however, I think it's the point: these people are very different but they barely mix, let alone know each other. Only a few connections exist between them (such as the professor who teached the director, who is herself the sister of another protagonist). Even the geographical connection, as shown by the train running in the background, is tenuous.

It's in this way that the film says a lot about "us", the French people, living as an increasingly divided society. But the connections I mentioned seem to shine a small spotlight of hope that these divides are not inevitable.

So even if the form of the film is weird and it might be hard to get into it (let alone stay interested the whole time),the image that the whole thing conveys and the message I can guess behind it are very interesting and worth a viewing.

Very interesting and cutting edge documentary of the Parisian metropolis; portraying a diverse panorama of people. What makes this film special is the sensitivity and empathy it encompasses towards all Parisians living in the metropolis - from children, senior citizens to the upper echelon of French society.