Slama’s Paris based film is mostly English language. It’s constructed around the charismatic presence of Agathe Rousselle, star of Titane, who looks as though she was born to play a moody bilingual traipsing round the streets of the capital in an indie movie. The aesthetic is breezy, handheld, capturing the energy of the city on the opening day of the Olympic Games. Elizabeth, a US citizen who is more French than American, works for a concierge firm, welcoming rich tourists. She’s also quasi-suicidal, for reasons we never get to understand, beyond a certain Camusian gallic leaning. One of her clients, pink-haired Elijah, played with a winsome charm by Alex Lawther, becomes fascinated by her, perhaps because she comes across as an alt-Parisian it-girl, and tags along with her as she gets increasingly stressed out by her job. Elizabeth (name derived from a Bergman character) is also deaf, and inevitably loses her expensive hearing aids. Slama directs with an energy which perhaps compensates for a somewhat whimsical narrative which never confronts the source(s) of Elzabeth’s disaffection with the world. At the same time, this feels like guerrilla filmmaking done with a certain aplomb, benefitting from great casting. The fact that it’s made mostly in English, with several sympathetic gringo characters, makes one wonder if it was conceived with one eye on the US festival circuit - it’s hard to empathise with North American tourists in Paris, even if they are hypnotists. (Is this supposed to be the anti Emily-in-Paris?)
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