A film review by Roger Moore for rogersmovienation.com on June 2, 2017 (and edited by the blogger).
All genre pictures pander, serving up conventions and clichés that faithful horror, romance, comic book or Furious fans relish and devour like comfort food.
So why not a European travelogue about a lonely wife seeing France for the first time? And who better to star than Diane Lane, of Under the Tuscan Sun, an actress whose later career often features her as a woman ignored, looking to get her groove back?
Eleanor Coppola, wife of Francis, director of Hearts of Darkness, the classic The Making of documentary about her husband’s Apocalypse Now, wrote and directed Paris Can Wait, which shamelessly panders to women of a certain age, easy-chair Travel Channel/Food Network addicts whose ears perk up at the mere mention of four magical words.
France. Frenchmen. Wine. Chocolate.
It’s a dithering little nothing of a movie which takes Lane, as the wife of a workaholic film producer husband (Alec Baldwin, wasted here) from the Cote d’Azur home of the Cannes Film Festival, to Paris, a distance of some 900 kilometers, or about 565 miles.
Anne is in Cannes with husband Michael, and Michael’s ever-ringing cell-phone, for the Film Festival. She dutifully takes care of his little life details (packing, etc.) while he deals with incessant calls about his latest film project.
No, he’s not listening when she sighs at being left alone in one of the most romantic corners of Europe, or complains of an earache. So when their private plane pilot says the cabin pressure will make her earache worse, she decides not to jet off to Budapest with Michael and plans to take the train to Paris and meet him when he’s done putting out film fires.
But she cannot take the train. Oh, no, no, no. Michael’s colleague Jacques (Arnaud Viard) will DRIVE her. He insists. And even though Michael blinks at this impulsive decision - He is FRENCH, remember! - He acquiesces.
You’ll be there by dinner time!
As that wouldn’t make for much of movie, dinner times come and go as Jacques leads Anne on the trip of a lifetime, making memories - and photographs - instead of deadlines, really diving into France with an expert, and flirtatious tour guide.
Jacques knows, seemingly, everybody. He has been everywhere, eaten every restaurant’s specialty and tasted every wine. He’s a You MUST try this, Let me show you that guide - the best kind, because he knows the best market in France, the best Roman aqueduct, the best roses, the best view.
And seeing France takes time. None of which is openly apparent to Anne. But when he grabs her luggage to toss into his car she gets her first clue. It’s a vintage, early 1970s Peugeot 504 convertible, unrestored and in deplorable condition. And you don’t make 565 mile road trips in a car like that without a few unscheduled stops.
Jacques needs to take a break from driving every hour. Forty-two minutes, Anne corrects him. There’s a cigarette to be smoked, and a radiator to be refilled. He is French, and so, alas, is his car.
But as they drive, the chatter and detours evolve from the birthplace of Cinema (Place Lumiere, Lyon) and the cathedral where Richard the Lionheart took up the cross for the Third Crusade (Vezelay Abbey in Burgundy) to Are you happy? Is he faithful? What makes you dance in the street?
As the wines, cheeses, assorted dishes and mad parade of chocolate delights arrive in this swank eatery or that riverside picnic, romance fills the air. Or would, if these two had even a hint of chemistry and this script was anything more than a wan, under-developed tease.
Coppola takes Jacques’ life-lessons a little too much to heart, and Paris Can Wait ambles along, 90 minutes that feel like 150. The sights are lovely, the sentiments adorable.
But there’s no spark to it, and far too little wit. Viard, a French actor-director, gives barely a hint of the rogue this charming/disarming rogue Jacques is meant to be. He subtly reconnects with women he has known, and has sex with two of them while Anne remains oblivious. A trip with Jacques, one says, is to be savored. Don’t be in such a hurry to get to Paris.
Often Jacques communicates with waiters, sommeliers, auto mechanics and old girlfriends in French, and we experience this as Anne (whom he’s nicknamed Brûlée, after the French dessert Crème brûlée) does. She’s an American woman trapped in a foreign land with a take-charge French sexist, who orders for her, decides where they stop and picks out the hotels.
Which she can only counter with a raised eyebrow and the protestation: Jacques, I am not French!
Neither Jacques nor the film are overbearing. But for all the lovely, out-of-the-way sights, for all of Coppola’s and Viard’s (he’s a French actor/director) efforts, for all the reliable Lane’s charms, Paris Can Wait delivers too little on the promise of its alluring title.
Movies, life and love, Jacques says, are like soufflés - all about timing. And Coppola’s timing is just… off. Paris Can Wait could have been a perfectly adorable wish-fulfillment fantasy for the over-40 American audience if she had simply chosen a more engaging leading man. [Moore’s rating: 2 out of 4 stars]
Blogger’s comment: Paris Can Wait opens at the 68th Cannes Film Festival, which Michael and Anne are attending. The dates are May 13-24, 2015. We know this because there are several shots in the opening scenes that show the 68th Cannes Film Festival poster, featuring a photo of Ingrid Bergman. This was the hundredth anniversary of her birth (August 29, 1915) and the showing of a special documentary on her life: Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words.
I mention this because writer/director Eleanor Coppola has created in Arnaud Viard’s character, Jacques, an almost exact copy of Bergman’s second husband Roberto Rossellini, in physical form, temperament and profession. Both men were sensualists, living life to the fullest, incapable of being faithful, seducing one woman after another and always desperately in debt. The fact that Diane Lane’s character, Anne, realized early on who Jacques was, and yet chose to enable him, and even pay for his philandering, makes her a mirror for Ingrid Bergman herself. When looked at from this perspective, Paris Can Wait becomes a richer, more satisfying, even satirical experience.
Labels: comedy, drama, Ingrid Bergman, romance
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