“Paris, 13th District”: groping toward happiness
Rated R. In French, Mandarin and English, with subtitles. 105 minutes. In theaters.
In “Paris, 13th District,” a very French French movie, he loves and she loves, but they don’t love each other, not exactly, or maybe not just yet. That’s how it goes with affairs of the heart, onscreen and off. Desire is tricky, mercurial, alternately fleeting and enduring, tragic and transcendent. But in French cinema it often seems unfailingly beautiful, exalted. That’s the case here, with lovely people exchanging caresses as the filmmaking elevates their every breathless moment, and their naked bodies offer their own pleasures.
Those bodies — shimmering and restless — fill the screen in “Paris, 13th District,” a sexy, laid back and at times melancholic story about being young and alive to other people. Shot largely in black-and-white, the movie is a tonal and thematic change of pace for director Jacques Audiard, who has a habit of haunting the grimmer, bleaker corners of human existence. His thriller “A Prophet” centers on a young man of Arab descent and his brutal coming-of-age in French prison; more recently, Audiard directed several episodes of the TV series “Le Bureau.” In this work, violence devours entire worlds.
Audiard is after something different in “Paris, 13th District.” Loose but energetic, it follows a handful of characters groping toward happiness. The first part concerns the tentative relationship between Emilie (Lucie Zhang), a French Chinese woman who’s drifting though life, and her new tenant, the charmer Camille (Makita Samba), a Black teacher planning to get his doctorate. The story opens with them pausing in between rounds of coitus. They’re hot for each other, justifiably so, and as the guileless camera hovers near them, you are reminded how sublime it is to see tenderness on-screen.
The easy, sensual warmth of the lovemaking is intimate and inviting, which describes “Paris, 13th District” as a whole. Written by Audiard with Céline Sciamma and Léa Mysius, the movie is loosely based on three stories in the American cartoonist Adrian Tomine’s collection “Killing and Dying.” This isn’t a literal adaptation, although there are points of connection between the original and this version. Mostly, what unites them is how each wrenches great feeling from stories about everyday life; here, lives abruptly change and even shatter in a single moment, a piercing absence, a sublime kiss.
Before too long, Emilie and Camille part ways. “You’re in love. I’m not,” one insists. The focus then shifts to Nora (Noémie Merlant), a white woman who has recently moved to Paris for school. She is somewhat older than Emilie and Camille; she also has the most complicated story line, one that involves misrecognition and a porn star named Amber Sweet (Jehnny Beth). More emotionally than narratively persuasive, this section nevertheless has appeal, drama and romantic suspense, particularly when Nora meets Camille. They spark and things grow awkward, more so after Emilie reemerges.
Audiard’s touch here is light, sensitive and attentive as usual; you feel his fondness for these characters and their world in every frame. As he likes to do, he folds in visual flourishes here and there; he splits the screen, uses an iris effect to focus your gaze and brusquely drops in an interlude in gaudy color. His boldest choice, though, is the black-andwhite cinematography, which gives everything a seductive, heightened luster and feels fresh, rather than nostalgic. Everything looks beautiful in “Paris, 13th District,” especially the different skin tones and gorgeously entangled bodies of its lovers.
It’s crucial to the movie’s quiet eloquence that the Paris it presents isn’t the city of gauzy reveries and tourist postcards, even if a few landmarks pop up now and again. Emilie lives in an apartment owned by her grandmother that’s in a blocky high rise, one of a cluster of buildings called the Olympiads (the movie’s original title), which were part of a late 1960s urban renewal project. Earlier such efforts in the 13th arrondissement have been singled out for their racism, specifically against immigrants from North Africa. A 2019 edition of “The Rough Guide to France” describes the area as “a strange semi-derelict pedestrian area seemingly suspended between giant tower blocks.” Ugh.
Audiard doesn’t directly engage this history, but it’s evident in his choices; even the opening credits bristle with meaning. These are set against a series of sweeping panoramic nighttime views of the area, images that are beguiling in their jewel-like luminosity — the black-and-white makes the evening gleam — and in the sensual flow of the camera. It sweeps over the towers, glides past windows teaming with life, drops into Émilie’s apartment and stops when Audiard’s name appears onscreen. In this still shot, the city stretches into the distance, the perfectly centered Pantheon punctuating the frame.
In 2019, the Pantheon — a heavily freighted monument to France that was commissioned by Louis XV and finished during the Revolution — was stormed by hundreds of migrants in the country without legal permission, most from West Africa.
“We are undocumented, the voiceless and faceless of the French Republic,” a leaflet read. You don’t hear about that protest in “Paris, 13th District,” but the movie has scarcely begun and already Audiard has with beauty, subtlety and grace let loose a cascade of meaning about France, its ideals, identity, political disputes and continuing power struggles.