Paul(Romain Duris) can't live with or without Anna(Joana Preiss). Jonathan(Louis Garrel) broke the fourth wall in the opening moments of "Dans Paris" and announces that the movie won't have a narrator. He's not the main character; Paul is, according to Jonathan. The narrator is lying. Jonathan's the main character because "Dans Paris" is about narration. Like most films, "Dans Paris" will proceed with omniscient narration. Unlike most films, however, the audience isn't made aware of this given. There's a tacit agreement between the filmmaker and moviegoer that the film begins where the backstory leaves off. But Jonathan speaks directly to the camera, forcing the viewer out of his passive stance. Jonathan isn't Paul's big brother, but he is "big brother" in the Orwellian sense of the word. Jonathan is literally, the omniscient narrator.

"Dans Paris" breaks down its story into two sections: Paul with Anna, and Paul without Anna. This compartmentalization extends to the mode of narration. When Paul and Anna are together, "Dans Paris" records their relationship in a non-linear fashion. When they're apart, the story becomes more sequential in its telling. The first part is told in non-sequential order because Jonathan picks and chooses what interests him the most; not surprisingly, most of the scenes feature Anna in a state of undress. Personal hygiene, or the lack of personal hygiene, is a subject that Anna broaches when Paul leaves their bed to take a shower. Anna believes Paul is leading by example. Paul's decision to lather up, Anna thinks, is tied in to the hope that she'll follow suit. Accused of being rank in a passive-aggressive fashion, Anna flips her lid. Since it's unlikely that Paul would share this moment with Jonathan, the viewer is led to believe that the younger brother is a filmic interloper, the camera's eye in the flesh. When Jonathan bumps into an old flame, this ex-lover cites personal hygiene for their break-up. In other words, "Dans Paris" has echoes. If Jonathan "controls the vertical and the horizontal", he controls the story of his life that's being narrated. Three women in one day, hmmm. We see it. But we see what he wants us to see.

A cursory glance at "Dans Paris" suggests that this neo-French New Waver is about a sad man who lost his girlfriend, but if you're attuned to the self-reflexive opening, you'll understand that it's really about narration.

If Dans Paris comes across as inconsistent and a little bit wavy at times, then I suppose that's a good thing because all sorts of relationships can be exactly that; particularly as they near their end. What begins as a tale looking at the final days of a relationship between a man and a woman quickly develops into a tale about family relations between two brothers, their father (who's divorced) and the other brother's attitude to relationships with other women. The film carries a very deliberately wavy atmosphere: a light hearted and jovial, if a little annoying at first, aura before taking a step back and becoming more sombre before going back to being of a surrealist and attacking nature. The film's immediate closing tone, however, is one of small scale unity – one that taps into child-like innocence and brings everything back down to Earth.

Dans Paris, or 'In Paris' in English, is a film very aware of itself and where it places itself. Early on in the film, one character delivers a brief line of dialogue to the camera informing us that he is not necessarily the film's protagonist. When he does this, he is standing on the balcony of one of those typically Hollywood Parisian-set apartments that has a perfect view of the Eiffel Tower across the rest of the skyline. The intent is set up very early on, at least in regards to this particular character's actions. By identifying he is not the main character, he is disregarding his physical antics from the text as unimportant or not 'as' important as certain other characters'. But his substantial placement within the text is vital, as he and his entire ideation about the treatment of women is told in parallel with his brother's actions following his deeply unsettling break up.

Christophe Honoré's film tells the story of one man named Paul (Duris) going through a routine break up with a woman named Anna (Preiss); a failure to connect with her and her son Loup (Rambert-Preiss). But the director opts out of going down a specific tone via route of depression and sadness for the overall piece. Jonathan (Garrel) offers relief from what is, essentially, the primary focus, only not evidently so and his actions on a separate equilibrium offer the idea that everyone else's life goes on despite what's happening back at home involving loved one's and their problems. In this sense, the film might remind you of Nancy Myers' 2006 film The Holiday in its study of two people (women, in that film's case) at two different points in their lives regarding relationships. Only In Paris has a more affectionate study and its leads are slightly more tolerable.

Paul's actions very early on reflect uncertainty and are of a sporadic nature. He goes from seemingly suicidal when he takes a photograph of himself with many pills in his mouth to rather upbeat when he shares a joke with his brother and then back to being very angry again, all with in a small space of time. Rather than act as a distorted and inconsistent tone when studying the respective situation, I think the film is getting across the shock to the system following the break up and the sporadic, uncertain mindset the individual might find themselves facing as they come to terms with what's happened.

The film, I think, manages to just about balance its upbeat and surrealist scenes. The film will either revolve around Jon's goings on whilst on his way to the shops and the mis-adventures he gets involved in with other women; with the claustrophobic and darkly lit scenes of Paul and his father sharing a space inside, both left to stew over the fact that both of them have lost their female partners at some point in their lives. Brothers Jon and Paul act as binary opposites to one another: whilst one is cheeky, upbeat and enthusiastic and possesses the power speak to us; the other remains very much the opposite: serious and downbeat, even during the few scenes we see Paul early on with Anna, his partner. Writer/director Honoré delivers a look at how two different men act towards women and the prospect of loving women with Paul himself admitting he over evaluates things and situations with women, while Jonathan seems to jump from relationship to relationship without much in the way of problems or thought.

Honoré peppers the film with a variety of clocks or timepieces. There is also an emphasis throughout the film on time, perhaps alluding to the passing of time these characters require. What was refreshing was that the film realises that Paul's situation is far more interesting, overall, than Jon's and focuses on him more towards the end. Dans Paris is an odd experience, punctuated by 'funny' antics of one man and the downbeat antics of another. But overall, as a simultaneous study of colloquial romance and the aftermath of broken down romance, it works quite well.

After the turn-off of his previous Ma Mère and the gloomy intensity of previous films, Christophe Honoré has produced a fourth feature that's economical and entertaining, a remarkable balance of moods that (as before) studies parental and sibling relationships, this time with elegant dialogue and amusing contrasts of scenes and characters and an evocation of the French New Wave that gives two of France's best and hottest young male film actors a chance for virtuoso performances.

Dark and light come in the form of the two brothers these actors play. One, Paul (Romain Duris), has broken up with his girlfriend (Joana Preiss) and, depressed after a series of disastrous scenes which we observe early on in back-and-forth jump-cut sequences that are intentionally confused in chronology, goes back to live with his caring father.

Though Paul's younger brother Jonathan (Louis Garrel), who's never left the paternal nest, tells us speaking into the camera in an early shot (which establishes the light and detached side of the film), that he's the narrator but only a lesser character in the story, he emerges also as an essential foil to Paul because of his success with the ladies and his larky attitude. He's as frolicsome as his brother is worrisomely dark-spirited and hopeless.

When not reading La Repubblica and watching Italian TV, Papà Mirko (Guy Marchand) does domestic things like make chicken soup and drag home a big Christmas tree he decorates alone.

Jonathan makes it with three girls in one day while trying to lure Paul shopping for presents at Monoprix. Dad summons his estranged wife and the boy's mother (Marie-France Pisier, of Jacques Rivette's 1974 Céline and Julie Go Boating, which this film evokes) to cheer up Paul too. And she succeeds: Paul's depression isn't seen one-dimensionally. Dad is amusingly cuddly, while Garrel's high spirits constantly contrast with Duris' glumness and relative inertia. But that inertia also has its sudden interruptions: he goes out early in the morning and jumps into the Seine, then returns wet and surprised at what he's done -- and at still being alive. Jonathan/Garrel is also clearly the Jean-Pierre Léaud of our days, and a bedroom shot links him with Godard's Belmondo. (Garrel is well-suited as a reborn Sixties icon after starring in his father Philippe's great 2005 evocation of '68, Regular Lovers as well as the earlier Bertolucci '68 piece The Dreamers, and his looks match the dash of Belmondo with the polish of Léaud. Duris has already shown his mercurial potential in a string of romantic comedies and his starring role in Jacques Audiard's dark, brilliant 2005 crime/art film, The Beat My Heart Skipped.

There's a lot of formally written and frenetically spoken French dialogue; Garrel is a master of the pout, snicker, and slurred one-liner; Duris emerges as the actor with more depth, while Garrel shows a new light, comedic side we haven't seen much of before. Marchand is appealing, and the movie has energy. Inrockuptibles, the influential and hip French review, calls this "The best French film of the year." Dans Paris is an actors', writer's, editor's tour de force that creates its own unique tragi-comic mood.