Two people driving to Paris and stopping to eat food pretty much sums up Eleanor Coppola’s Paris Can Wait.
Despite the rather bland premise the movie is strangely charming and enchanting.
Anne (Diana Keaton) is the wife of movie producer Michael (Alec Baldwin) who is married more to his phone than to her.
When Anne’s sensitive ears hurt she forgoes the flight from Cannes to Budapest to have her husband’s business partner Jacque (Arnaud Viard) offer to drive her to Paris; what follows might seem like the world’s most boring road trip but turns out to be almost poignant in its simplicity.
The growing attraction between Anne and Jacque is obvious but the 80-year-old director of the film hardly reveals anything at all.
There is no story in the traditional sense, we’re just watching two people drive through the picturesque French countryside and watching them eat delicious delicacies and drink copious amounts of wine but at the same time I felt drawn to the characters.
Perhaps the defining moment in the movie is Anne standing in front of a medieval statue of the Virgin Mary and her son in an ancient church where Richard the Lionheart planned the crusades.
It is under the dim glow of the candlelight where she revels her secret to Jacque and in that moment Eleanor Coppola’s film captured what it truly means to be human and to be alive.
Paris Can Wait is not what you would expect it to be but it is well worth the watch.
It has a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ and makes the mundane seem almost magical.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
Rated: PG
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
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