by Matt St Clair
Ten years after Rust and Bone comes another rumination on love and sex from director Jacques Audiard. His new black-and-white romance Paris, 13th District has a more unfastened narrative structure as it follows a small quartet of twenty and thirty-somethings finding romance in the city of love and figuring out their overall place in the world...
The first character in the main quartet we follow is Emelie (Lucie Zhang), a college graduate working a mundane call center job who’s at slight odds with her distant family. Things get complicated with her roommates Camille (Makita Simbo), a school teacher dealing with his own delicate familial tensions, once they begin having recreational sex. Meanwhile, real estate agent Nora (Noemie Merlant) matriculates back into college only to be rattled by a case of mistaken identity. She's mistake for cam girl Amber Sweet (Jehnny Beth). The two form an intimate online bond but do virtual bonds rival physical intimacy?
The character of Nora best encapsulates the movie’s theme of dissecting the difference between sex and love. Actress Noemie Merlant, who previously wowed viewers in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, seamlessly conveys the fanciful tightrope between lovestruck feelings and carnal desire that Nora finds herself walking on.
In her feature film debut, Lucie Zhang emerges as the acting co-MVP as Emilie. As Zhang presents Emilie’s blissful yearning for companionship, she simultaneously taps into her disarmingly frank discontent with her life as it is. Her fickle nature helps you understand why Camille is skeptical of taking their bond further. While his role’s not particularly showy, Makita Simbo gives a fine, receptive performance as the man caught in the middle of this quadrangle.
All four actors expertly demonstrate the constant push-and-pull their characters show, bringing to life the loose and simple yet compelling story co-written by Audiard, Céline Sciamma, and Léa Mysius. In addition, the serene score composed by electronic music artist Rone helps give Paris, 13th District its almost mellow quality even if the music is dispersed in random sequences.
Minus the heartbreaking scene of Nora being subjected to online ridicule over the case of mistaken identity, Paris, 13th District is mostly a calm unostentatious meditation on romance and finding yourself at a time in your life when you’re expected to have everything figured out. Paris 13th District doesn’t reinvent the wheel for the romance genre, or even the “coming of age in your late 20’s/early 30’s” film pantheon, but still thrives on its performances and its profundity. B
Paris 13th District opens today in movie theaters in select cities.