Paris, 13th District
A layered, lovely look at a French threesome (+1) of young people navigating the gray areas between sex and love.
The thing about French movies is they’re so distinctly French. Even before you hear the language being spoken, I think you could watch five minutes of any movie and figure out it’s French just from the way they approach cinema and love — somehow very casual and yet studied.
And yet I couldn’t help get a distinctly American flavor from “Paris, 13th District.” It’s a romantic drama about three young people navigating the gray areas between sex, love and commitment. A fourth figure appears late in the last act to become important, though more as a foil to one of the other characters.
The film seems very much of a place, people and time, in this case twentysomethings living in a multicultural district in 2022, dealing with crappy apartments, low-hierarchy jobs and disdainful elders, not unlike their U.S. counterparts. They’re cool and carefree and think they have all the answers, though a few months’ adventures will show that they, like every generation before, are fooling themselves.
It’s directed by Jacques Audiard, probably one of the best international filmmakers working today who’s never been nominated for an Oscar, though he’s wracked up plenty of notice at Cannes and the Césars — “A Prophet,” “Rust and Bone,” “Dheepan.”
He wrote the screenplay with Léa Mysius (“Thunderbirds”) and Céline Sciamma (“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”), both well-regarded directors in their own right, with collaboration by Nicolas Livecchi, based upon several short stories by Adrian Tomine.
As you might guess from such an eclectic array of creative talent, “Paris, 13th District” intentionally feels less like a cohesive narrative than a collection of intersecting characters and storylines. Rather than falling back into chaos, though, this gives the film an organic, just-watching-life-happen feel.
Emilie Wong (Lucie Zhang) is a Japanese-French woman in her early- to mid-20s who embraces the directionless nature of her life. Working a dead-end job in a call center selling cellphone plans, she prides herself on having very casual flings in which she is firmly in control.
She meets something of her match in Camille Germain (Makita Samba), a slightly older teacher from a family of African origin. He looks her up because she has an extra bedroom to let in the titular Parisian neighborhood. At first Emilie resists, preferring a female roommate, but she soon relents — and they almost immediately begin having sex with each other.
Camille demonstrates that he’s even more of a take-it-or-leave-it type than her when it comes to relationships. She jokes with him that he’s falling in love with her despite their arrangement, and he withdraws suddenly from her — quite literally, mid-coitus — to prove that he can subtract his emotions from sex with ease.
Things quickly turn chilly, especially after Camille begins a new affair with Stephanie (Oceane Cairaty), another teacher. You can probably guess how it affects their living arrangement.
Midway through the movie, we are introduced to Nora Ligier (Noémie Merlant), a woman in her early 30s who is excited about returning to university to study law. She spent the last decade working in real estate for her uncle in the country, and is a bit unsure about herself and where she fits.
Nora suffers a crisis when she puts on a blonde wig for a college party and is mistaken for Amber Sweet, a semi-famous camgirl porn star. Ridiculed by her younger classmates, she winds up making a detour back into real estate, where she works with Camille, also taking a break from teaching while he works on his doctorate.
Having been traumatized, Nora makes it clear to Camille about the platonic nature of their partnership, in less than friendly terms. But… she finds herself falling for the gentle, unimposing Camille.
Right around this time, Emilie reenters the story to complicate this new romance, and Nora seeks out and befriends the real Amber Sweet (Jehnny Beth, best known as the frontwoman for the band Savages).
All three of the main actors give lovely, layered performances that make us feel like we’ve encountered authentic people, filled with contradictions, failings and a measure of grace.
Camille is the sort of very smart person who often fools himself into doing extraordinary stupid things. For example, when his 16-year-old sister, who suffers from stuttering, tries out stand-up comedy he gives his honest, scathing opinion of her nascent efforts, rather than just lending a youngster the support she craves.
Emilie is the most overtly unlikable of the trio, a thoroughly immature woman who has embraced the ethos of freedom as a reason to be self-centered and dismissive of others. She has a grandmother suffering from dementia at a nearby facility who she rarely visits — at one point, she even bribes another roommate to visit in her place. But we suspect there’s a nugget of hopefulness underneath her mountain of cynicism.
(Take it from me: every cynic is just a dashed romantic.)
Nora is the hardest to puzzle out, perhaps because she’s an enigma even to herself. She’s more of a traditionalist when it comes to relationships than Camille or Emilie, and her passivity has gradually morphed into a patina of victimhood. But, in some ways, she may be the strongest and most mercenary of them.
There’s a lot of skin in “Paris, 13th District,” though Audiard mostly keeps his camera focused on the actors’ faces and emotions than leering over their bodies. In contrast to American movies, where you’re likely to see more nudity from male actors than the women these days, here Samba clings to a bit of coyness while the women are unafraid to let it all hang out.
I also noted that the thespians, while extremely attractive, have very normal, healthy bodies rather than the ubiquitous American standard: toned, waxed and CGI’d into the oblivion of the uncanny valley. Who else is ready for the tyranny of six-pack abs to end?
“Paris, 13th District” is the story of people who are grown up but still figuring out what that truly means, especially when it comes to opening up to another person in a deep, lasting way.
It may seem a strange association, but this movie most reminded me of “Dazed and Confused” and other early Richard Linklater efforts. There’s a sense of circularity as these characters wander around the screen, bumping into each other, falling in and out of each other’s beds, and possibly in love, if they’ll stop sniggering at the prospect long enough to give it a chance.