Paris, 13th District (Jacques Audiard, 2021) (Patreon)

There's nothing particularly wrong with Paris, 13th District (aka Les Olympiades). It has quite a lot going for it, actually. The black-and-white cinematography is crisp and dynamic, using the buildings of the titular arrondissement as a visual refrain, tying the various story strands together in with an unfussy formalism. The three lead actors are all suitably charismatic. Although the film has been widely received as a star-making turn for Lucie Zhang, Noémie Berlant and especially Makita Samba are just as commanding. And then there's also the frank depiction of sexuality which, as various members of the film commentariat have observed, is becoming increasingly rare. (Business considerations, such as the lucrative but censorious Chinese market, are mostly to blame, but then the West seems to be facing a new wave of prudery, with bitter incels leading the charge.)

So why didn't I really like Paris, 13th District? I think it has to do with a strange sense that it's both overly ambitious and somehow not ambitious enough. Put another way, Audiard and his esteemed co-writers Céline Schiamma and Léa Mysius have created the best possible version of a story (or set of stories) that are just not terribly interesting. The project is an adaptation of a number of narratives from the highly regarded graphic novels of Adrian Tomine, and while I have not read Tomine's original material, Paris very much feels like comic book. It comes across as stilted in its efforts to be transgressive, and Audiard never really fleshes out any of the main characters. They remain opaque, but the idea seems to be that they are sexy enough that we won't really care.

The on-again / off-again romance between unexpected roommates Emilie (Zhang) and Camille (Samba) offers the occasional bit of snappy badinage, but mostly it's a story driven by a character in a perpetually foul mood, bouncing bad vibes off a guy who lets his guard down, gets hurt, and then blithely ironizes the entire relationship away. (Maybe I just don't like Millennials?) The sudden mid-film introduction of Nora (Berlant) is rather clumsy, and the film doesn't have much of a sense of what to do with the character. Paris is so preoccupied with being breezy and cavalier that it can't really address Nora's sexual victimization as a child, even as it cynically plants it as motivation for her hang-ups with Camille and eventual fixation on cam-girl Amber Sweet (Jehnny Beth).

So I guess I just think this film lands between chairs. Its tone -- young, chic, insouciant -- isn't that different from Cédric Klapisch trifles L'Auberge Espagnole or Chinese Puzzle. And yet Audiard keeps suggesting that there is a world outside the confines of 20-something narcissism. Put another way, how can the subplot with Emilie's dying grandmother (Xing Xing Cheng) reasonably coexist with something as preposterous and jury-rigged as Nora being drubbed out of law school because she's mistaken for a porn star ten years her junior? The answer is clear. Paris, 13th District actually cares more about the porn scenario, because it drives the plot toward sexual mischief. The grandmother, for both Emilie and the film itself, is merely an inconvenience.

Having said all that, this isn't a film I particularly want to slag. When adult desire is being purged from movie screens worldwide (but especially in Hollywood), I'm inclined to stand up for something even moderately urbane. I just wish Audiard's approach had been a bit more sophisticated. But then, the director of The Beat That My Heart Skipped, A Prophet, and Rust and Bone clearly prefers emotional exhibitionism over subtlety. At least the buildings were pretty.