For my second week back on the “Movies” beat — the film recommendation bit I’m doing during my weekly segment on The Chris Vernon Show — the topic is “Americans” in Paris, based on the new Woody Allen film Midnight in Paris, which opens in Memphis tomorrow and stars Owen Wilson as a Hollywood screenwriter on holiday in the City of Lights. (My review here.)
So here are my Top 5 non-French films set in Paris:
5. The Dreamers (2004): Director Bernardo Bertolucci’s second sexually provocative film about an American male in Paris, following the more titanic but also more dated 1972 landmark Last Tango in Paris. Here young American Michael Pitt has a meet-cute with Parisian siblings Eva Green and Louis Garrel at the cinema in the days leading up to the May 1968 national protests and ends up living with them while their parents are away, resulting in an emotionally and sexually complicated triangle. Full of references and homages to the classic Hollywood and French New Wave films the characters love. The title is both sympathetic and a critique. My original review here.
Trailer:
