Paris in the Springtime

Get Apriled in Paris this weekend without traveling farther than Overland Park. Johnson County Community College stamps your passport for four free French movies at the school's sleek new Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (12345 College Boulevard in Overland Park, 913-469-8500). The most satisfying of the quartet is the first, Cléo From 5 to 7, which plays at 6:30 tonight. The 1962 drama follows the title character, a struggling chanteuse, through Paris in real time as she waits to hear whether she has cancer. Corinne Marchand plays the sexy, vain singer with an ingénue's mix of determination and fragility; her Cléo won't slink gentle into that good night. If intimations of mortality, verité shots of de Gaulle's Paris, and composer Michel Legrand playing a smarmy musician aren't enough, look for French New Wave icons Jean-Luc Godard and actress Anna Karina in cameos. More lighthearted heroines drive When the Cat's Away (noon Saturday) and Amélie (2 p.m. Saturday), a pair of crowd pleasers that showcase a modern, whimsical Paris. Paris Je T'aime, a pastiche of romantic vignettes by provocateurs Olivier Assayas, Alfonso Cuarón and Tom Tykwer (among more than a dozen others, including the Coen brothers), closes out the series at 1 p.m. Sunday. Janette Funaro, associate professor of French at JCCC, introduces the screenings. She'll stick around to discuss the movies afterward, no subtitles required. Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art
Fri., April 18, 6:30 p.m.; Sat., April 19, 12 & 2 p.m.; Sun., April 20, 1 p.m., 2008