Jacques Audiard’s speciality as a director is stories about violent men who do not have an innate taste for violence. So it’s something of a surprise that his new movie is a sweet-hearted romance, centered on three women and involving but one act of violence. Paris, 13th District (terrible title) is about the travails of those women (and one charming man), trying to get their lives started in a time where most interpersonal interaction is done remotely – over screens, on the phone, through text. Even though the pandemic is not directly referenced, you know the drill.
Their part of Paris is not especially romantic; the 13th district is dominated by tower blocks built in the seventies with an Olympic theme, which give the movie its name. It’s a world of cramped apartments, crowded public spaces, concrete walkways and depressing jobs. No wonder online offers a sense of escape. But despite life’s everyday disappointments, the movie radiates an unusual sense that joy is possible anywhere with the right people. It’s rare to see such forthrightness about adult choices come together with such panache.
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Audiard also has a gift for adapting short works by one author into a completely fresh feature film. Rust and Bone was based on two unconnected short stories by the Canadian Craig Davidson, that were melded into that magnificent story about the animality of human nature.
This time Audiard co-wrote the screenplay with Léa Mysius and Céline Sciamma – who obviously both contributed to the frank modernity and the sexual wildness – based on three unconnected short comics by Adrian Tomine, an American graphic novelist. His visual style involves a lot of clean lines and minimal colours, and the choice by Audiard and cinematographer Paul Guilhaume to shoot in black and white does a lot to mirror Tomine’s style. But as Audiard said in a talk this critic attended, it was also a deliberate choice to make the sex less pornographic – there is a great deal of that in this film, sex and pornography both – which means this is an arthouse movie, soaked in sex, that genuinely lives up to the old ‘artistic’ cliché.
And yet you can absolutely watch this movie for the articles. Emilie (Lucie Zhang, in her first film) is working in a call centre, and then a Chinese restaurant, despite having recently gained an excellent degree. She lives in her grandmother’s apartment with a series of flatmates, and is bored out of her mind. Nora (Noémie Merlant, fragile like a bomb) is in her early 30s, finally attending university and trying desperately to fit in with the teenagers on her course. When she wears a blonde wig to a student disco, she has no idea it gives her a striking resemblance to the camgirl Amber Sweet (Jehnny Beth, who does incredible empathic work in a highly sexualised part), who’s a great favourite among the lads.
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After Nora is mocked by an entire lecture hall over the resemblance, she drops out and goes back to work as an estate agent. Where her manager is Camille (Makita Samba, also in his first film), who’s in his late twenties and taking a break from a teaching career. And quelle surprise – Camille used to be Emilie’s flatmate, a living arrangement which involved unusual amounts of nude karaoke and acrobatic sex.
While Nora and Camille start dating, Camille and Emilie still have a tremendous connection – not quite friends, no longer lovers, but they chat all the time. And Nora is somehow drawn to Amber, paying for small-talk conversations, that Amber politely tolerates until she realises Nora’s porn-site username is her real name. As Nora babbles in embarrassment at her naivety, Amber laughs, sends her personal email, blows a kiss and their conversations move to Skype (after work hours, of course).
So it’s not quite a love triangle – a love rhombus, perhaps. The question is whether anyone will figure out what they really want – and from who. Nora’s twenties were subsumed to a mistake, and her groping attempts at finally figuring herself out involve an unusual combination of chutzpah and anxiety. Camille’s mother has recently died, and he appears to have thrown over his teaching career to make space for his grief, without directly addressing either. More interestingly, he openly admits to making up for professional boredom through an active sex life, and there’s a funny sequence after a party where Nora has the sudden realisation he’d slept with every woman there, including Emilie.
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The thing is, Camille radiates a sense of calm just as strong as his sexual confidence, an endearingly trustworthy combination which makes it obvious why every woman he passes throws her knickers at him. Emilie’s sexual bravery is not quite so obvious, not least because she’s such a grouch. Her family are disappointed she isn’t making more of a conventional success of herself, although the movie is too smart to be explicit about whether Emilie’s bad luck is due to racism or her attitude.
On the other hand, there’s the admirable sequence where Emilie gets pinged on a hook-up app, tells her manager she has to run an errand, hands off her tray of food and skips home for a shag. Shortly after, she waltzes back into the restaurant – literally waltzes, shining with such satisfaction the diners applaud. If a conventional career prevents you from doing that, who needs it?
Ms Zhang and Mr Samba are extraordinary finds, with the appeal of true movie stars and a relaxed sense of themselves that’s tough to fake. Ms Beth’s scenes are almost entirely through a laptop screen, which does not mute her charm or her obvious decency. And Ms Merlant’s restraint is clearly just one button away from popping completely.
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Audiard has always had an incredible frankness about the human body – think of the way he films Tahar Rahim hiding the razorblade in his mouth in A Prophet, or how Marion Cotillard’s missing legs in Rust and Bone were treated as a matter of fact, nothing special. The sexual frankness here is neither exploitative nor crass – it’s just incredibly adult, in the truest sense of the word. Even Amber’s shows are done with a spirit of professionalism, that make the point without going overboard.
It’s not all perfect; the subplots with Emilie’s deteriorating grandmother (Xing Xing Cheng) and Camille’s stuttering teenage sister (Camille Léon-Fucien) should have demanded more from them both emotionally, or been cut altogether. This is a movie about the lucky time when life’s adult responsibilities have not yet dampened your ability to enjoy life’s adult pleasures. And distractions from the sexual experiments that are the movie’s focus should have been kept to a minimum. But that’s a quibble. Overall, this is a joyous film about the kind of human connections we should all be so fortunate to have. And the one act of violence? It’s between two women, and more than justified.