Film Review

By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

Paris, Texas
Directed by Wim Wenders
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment 11/84 DVD/VHS Feature Film
R

Directed by Wim Wenders with a screenplay by Sam Shepard and L.M. Kit Carson, Paris,Texas won the Grand Prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival. Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) is a tattered and disoriented man who is found wandering in the desert by his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) after a four-year absence. During this period, Walt and his wife (Aurore Clement), who run a billboard business in California, have raised his son Hunter (Hunter Carson).

With great patience and gentle concern, they give Travis the space he needs to put his life back together again and reclaim his relationship with Hunter. Then father and son leave for Houston to find the boy's mother, Jane (Natassja Kinski). She now works in a peep-show parlor where men talk to women through a mirror. In this bizarre setting, husband and wife try to untangle their troubled history. Travis decides to wipe away the sins of the past — which include domestic violence — by returning Hunter to his mother's care. It is an act of redemptive love.

Paris, texas is a lengthy and quirky movie that is greatly enhanced by the evocative cinematography of Robby Muller and the sensitive music of Ry Cooder. Harry Dean Stanton excels in a role that finally taps into the talents of this incredibly expressive actor. The storyline, with its accent on the lost who are found and the surprise of selfless love, has a spiritual quality that seems well-suited to the desert setting of the film.

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by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat