Paris, 13th District (2021) User Reviews

connections and breaks

[ferguson-6 · 7/10 · 14 April 2022]

Greetings again from the darkness. Jacques Audiard is one of the filmmakers who has won my cinematic loyalty through his consistently thought-provoking and entertaining films. His five features since 2005 have all been excellent: THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED (2005), A PROPHET (2009), RUST AND BONE (2012), DEEPHAN (2015), THE SISTERS BROTHERS (2018). This latest is a different kind of story for Audiard, and it's based on the stories from animator Adrian Tomine. Audiard adapted the screenplay with Nicholas Livecchi, Lea Mysius, and Celine Sciamma (writer and director of PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE, 2019). The result is a unique vision of modern-day love set in an area of Paris that is rarely featured in films.

Audiard gives us a REAR WINDOW-esque opening that lands on a couple evidently singing naked Karaoke. We are then informed, "It began like this." Emilie (newcomer Lucie Zhang) is a tele-salesperson augmenting her income by renting out a room in her apartment ... well, it's her grandmother's apartment, but she is confined to a nursing home suffering from Alzheimer's. Emilie wants a female roommate and Camile is the first to schedule a showing. Only Camile (Makita Samba) isn't female. Instead, he's a handsome teacher working on his doctorate, and since there is a spark between he and Emilie, she agrees to let him move in. The attraction plays out as you would imagine, right up until Camile slams on the brakes and informs a frustrated Emilie that he has no intention of being a couple, and soon invites another lady friend over for an evening of intimacy. The micro-aggressions between Emilie and Camile escalate, and soon he moves out.

Next we meet thirty-something Nora (Noemie Merlant, PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE) who is excited (almost giddy) to be headed back to law school. It doesn't take long for classmates to mistake her for a popular online sexy cam-girl named Amber Sweet. The mistaken identity and bullying cause Nora to drop out and return to her previous profession - real estate. It turns out the local office is being managed by Camile, who, disillusioned with teaching, is looking for a fresh start by helping out a friend. Nora sets the ground rules and the two maintain a professional relationship, right up to the point where they cross the line and become lovers.

Audiard shoots most of the film in black and white, which gives it the timeless feel of so many French romantic dramas over the years. The difference here stems from the sexual dynamics and interconnected stories and characters all within Paris' 13th arrondissement. One of the terrific storylines has Nora cultivating a chat relationship with the same Amber Sweet (Jehnny Beth of the English rock band Savages) she was mistaken for. Personal grief plays a role with two of the main characters, while a dark family secret burdens another. This emphasizes how we each carry the past and it sticks with us regardless of the path we choose. The film also reinforces how there are invariably contradictions in how we see ourselves and our actual behavior. These characters may engage in casual sex, though by the end, it's clear each wants more than they are willing to admit. Things wrap up pretty neatly in the end, but the road travelled is a bit rocky.

Insightful Arthouse Romantic-Comedy

[hunter-friesen · 7/10 · 17 September 2021]

A call center representative, teacher, real estate agent, and online webcam model somehow find their lives coming together in the new Jacques Audiard film, "Paris 13th District" ("Les Olympiades").

Audiard has taken a special interest in the lives of resilient people set within his native country. The films "Dheepan" and "A Prophet '' don't showcase France at its best, instead, they shine a light on the many problems Audiard sees. After taking a detour into the English-language for the unfairly ignored "The Sisters Brothers'', Audiard (along with co-writer Céline Sciamma of "Portrait of a Lady on Fire'' fame) once again sets his sights on modern French society, this time through the gaze of not one, but four main characters.

Our protagonists (or antagonists depending on your viewpoint) all reside within the titular district of Paris, a highly populated sector known for its mixture of modern and traditional architecture. Émilie is a phone operator at a cell phone service call center who is stuck in a rut both professionally and romantically. She's a disappointment to her Taiwanese immigrant parents, who often call to tell her about her sister's experience as a doctor in England. Luckily, her romantic prospects improve by the arrival of Camille, a lonely school teacher who is inquiring about the vacant room in her apartment. Carnal feelings impulsively take over their relationship, something Émilie prefers as she lives by the motto "fuc* first, talk later."

At the same time, Nora is a real estate agent trying to reinvent herself by going back to school, despite being a dozen years older than her fellow students. Further compounding her misfit status is her striking resemblance to famous webcam model Amber Sweet. She soon receives the unwanted attention of lustful boys, forcing her to retreat from academic prospects. With morbid curiosity, Nora decides to meet her doppleganger and see if they share anything besides just looks.

Like Paul Thomas Anderson in "Magnolia" or Robert Altman in "Short Cuts", Audiard acts as a puppet master, crossing and pulling the strings of his characters. Being that there are only four main characters compared to dozens within Anderson and Altman's films, the interactions are more frequent. Audiard is interested in exploring the idea of opposites attracting, which brings out both the best and worst in each other.

These characters carry a lot of baggage with them, which often gets saddled onto their partner in an acrimonious fashion. Audiard and Sciamma take an authentic approach to these moments, with characters getting in heated arguments that sometimes lead to break-ups, and sometimes lead to sex. The film is quite sexually explicit, with each actor bearing it all for the black-and-white screen. Except for the exceptional Noémie Merlant, the cast consists of relative unknowns, a fact that never crossed my mind as they have the chops of veterans.

Speaking of black-and-white, the grainy cinematography by Paul Guillaume strips down the film to its rawest form. Like Sam Levinson's "Malcolm & Marie", the lack of color works to center our focus on the actors and their condensed surroundings.

While the beautiful cinematography could be guessed from still images, what is most surprising is the great electronic score by French musical artist Rone. Mixing pop beats with fluttery strings, the score embodies the clash between modernity and tradition that is present within the characters and the city itself.

Not without its problems, "Paris 13th District" often gets too attached to the trio of Émilie, Camille, and Nora, leaving Amber to a lower supporting status, despite her having the only sequence of the film shot in color. Frustratingly, Jehnny Beth's great work as the most interesting character isn't given the attention that most surely deserves.

As filled with millennial insight as it is filled with nudity, "Paris 13th District" is a lighter affair from the dependable Jacques Audiard. Barring a few small setbacks within the script, the film is an arthouse delight that will connect with younger viewers, possibly more than they want it to.

Pequeño gran film

[aleskander · 8/10 · 18 April 2022]

Un pequeño gran film francés que pone en escena aspectos de la vida en un distrito de París. Destacan la pantalla partida, una fotografía excepcional, las interesantes interpretaciones, la profundidad del guion y la emotividad de algunos momentos de la película.

Brilliant

[AliAMN · 7/10 · 29 March 2022]

At first, I thought it was going to be a threesome movie like "LOVE" I was wrong, but it felt good. I liked it. I think it was better than Hollywood melodramas!

I liked the way it was made. B&W shots, simple soundtracks, and the storyline.

It's French

[rcuttill · 6/10 · 1 April 2022]

I don't mind films with subtitles although it can be distracting reading them whilst trying to follow the action. This film is basically one man and three women whose lives intertwine in the 13e district of Paris. There's some simulated sex and a bit of nudity which isn't bad. However I don't think we get enough of the characters and the story. So pleasant but I did expect more of a narrative that goes somewhere. There doesn't seem to be much of a conclusion. It just sort of ends.

Beautiful and tasteful

[charlesmoon-60643 · 4 May 2023]

French director Jacques Audiard tells a heartwarming story of lovers finding their paths in Paris. The film follows a handful of characters searching for happiness in the French capital. The sensual warmth of the sex scenes is intimate. The script is written by Audiard together with Céline Sciamma and Léa Mysius. It's loosely based on three stories in the cartoonist Adrian Tomine's collection "Killing and Dying." It isn't a literal adaptation, though there are points of connection with the original work. What unites them is how lives abruptly change and even shatter in a single moment, like in a kiss.

Les Olympiades is one Seductive Sticky Snake Pod of a place in Pariszzzzzze

[paul-2796 · 7/10 · 12 November 2021]

It's pure honey 🍯 of an adventure into what can be shared and what is not for sharing in relationships in a laconic suburb of life and Paris, testing the limits of groking and groping for the comfort of the bourgeoisie and the meaning of commuting.

Is that all there is, my friends....it is shot as intimately as it feels....and it is impossible to put down once you experience a bit of questing sensuality.

A millennial tale of love and loneliness - How can meaningful relationships ever be formed in this fast-moving world?

[UnChienAndalou1929 · 9/10 · 1 August 2021]

The setting is Paris, 13th district. Youth culture. The fast life of millennials. Aspirations. Vanity. Egotistic admiration of one's idealised self-image and attributes. Sex. Love. Loneliness.

Written and directed by the veteran French filmmaker Jacques Audiard and shot predominantly in black-and-white monochrome, Les Olympiades, Paris 13e (2021) is adapted from three interweaving stories about sex and love by the American comic book artist Adrian Tomine.

The film is about the hope (and hopelessness) of being a millennial and trying to find your place in this fast-moving world.

People do people things...

[IanFRobinson · 6/10 · 15 June 2022]

Paris 13 District. Not much happens. People do people things. Then they do some more things. They do them in quintessentially French ways. Then the film ends with the leads in relationships with who you would expect if you were asked to predict them halfway through.

Audiart the Son has produced yet another minor masterpiece

[anxiousgayhorseonketamine · 9/10 · 8 May 2022]

Serious vitality present in this piece probably just the lifeforce of the sexual drive of mankind

Those millennials here live in a very bleak world ruled by necessity survival greed selfishness in a way which previous generations can only gawp at in disbelief

It can be best summarized in the question "Is this what it has come to?" The answer is seemingly yes

Relationships are commercial transaction or shadows of that; an ersatz for human interraction; what did we seriously expect after 40 years of Neoliberalism? A more caring way of relating .... these are folks who know nothing but precariousness of work and relationships; a subtle urban brutality is written in their daily wherever they look add to that the digital alienation which is the wallpaper and in some ways the blueprint of their lives .... nothing else could have come out of all this

It is a beautiful depiction of this milieu this section of the population; the 13th Arrondissement of Paris looks more like Saõ Paulo or Shanghai than it does Paris

The truly bilingual and bicultural reality of the main character here Émilie is awesome to watch the switching between the 2 worlds between Voltaire and Kong Fu Tzu without even a blink. All the actors here are excellent and Audiart the son has produced yet another minor masterpiece like The Prophet he made a few years back. Here it is a Parisian Love story for the 21st century.

Interracial love showing

[RezaKhalili-1995 · 7/10 · 8 June 2022]

It is an ordinary show of relationships (breaks and connections). There is nothing special about the story but the way of showing it, is eye-catching. B&W version doesn't mean to me. The story didn't occur in past and the roles aren't B&W in their personality.

Audiard is back!

[shabanavdulaj · 8/10 · 16 March 2022]

It's excruciating having on your laptop the video file for a film you're dying to see but not having the subtitles for it. - 2022 goal: learn French. - Today, someone, God bless his soul, uploaded the English subs for the movie, and I finally got to watch it.

A beautiful film! A candid and unreserved look at love life in the early thirties, portrayed brilliantly by an - Merlant excluded - unknown cast. What I loved the most here was how the film floats around from one character to the other, detaching you in a way from them, but that worked so well in creating a cozy, calming atmosphere where you can enjoy the movie without getting too emotionally attached with any of them. Audiard takes you and puts you into a place where you can't "get hurt" by connecting too deeply or caring a lot for a character while at the same time telling a story that's supposed to do that to you. That alone, I think it's incredible to pull off, but Jacques managed to do so with flying colors. Here we got, essentially, the tearless, color-deprived version of last year's 'The Worst Person in the World' (plus through some "online dating" perspective into it). 'Paris, 13th District' was a comfortable watch for me, and I think it's a film I'll revisit because, again, I found it extremely relaxing. And with that, I don't mean there weren't moments I didn't have an emotional response to what I saw. The emotions are there, especially in the end. They just don't hit you like Hiroshima.

This doesn't look like like but like an old man's fantasies

[tombugnon · 5/10 · 3 January 2022]

Just in case anyone is wondering:

This film is not about millenials' life in Paris, it's about what an old man apparently completely out of touch with the youth imagines it to be. Dialogs sounds completely fake throughout. Parisian millenial friends and I spent the whole movie laughing at the innemurable absurdities.

The only thing that sounds sincere is the relationship between Nora and Amber.

Black and White and True and Beautiful

[thebeachlife · 10/10 · 28 August 2021]

Émilie, Camille, Nora, Amber Sweet: all of them don't want to be alone so they do lots of things in order not to. They are so alone quand même.

But wait, is there any hope?

Watch until the end.

Why is this film so beautiful? Because of the magical Noémie Merlant? Or is it that it is black and white? Or is it Paris? Or M. Audiard? All of the four, I guess. Go watch!

The dredges of thrusting body parts...

[wickedmikehampton · 8/10 · 11 April 2022]

A sophisticated cleaving of the heart and identity that's both a sex drama and a love story - just like life. I was absorbed by the complicated reality of finding oneself and each other. When we give away parts of ourselves, can we jigsaw them back together?

Director Jacques Audiard impresses - he's previously made great movies but this is his classiest. All round, the actors were perfection - Lucie Zhang dazzles in her feature debut, and Noémie Merlant is as wonderful as she was in 'Portrait of a Lady on Fire'. The screenwriting and cinematography were terrific too.

'Paris, 13th District' more than absorbed me as its emotions remain with me. Its black & white was perfect for watching last rainy night, and holding onto this rainy morning.

Couples move beyond sex to connection

[maurice_yacowar · 8/10 · 29 May 2022]

As the title suggests, Les Olympiades, Paris 13e is a cultural barometer. To represent contemporary France director Jacques Audiard focuses on a little-known arrondisement known for its spectacular modern architecture - hence the opening sweep - and its young, ascendant middle class population that includes a high concentration of Chinese. Here is melting pot France, for better or worse. Nary an Eiffel, beret or baguette shot here.

In accord with this fresh take on Paris, both central relationships begin with mistaken identity. Emilie is surprised to find that the Camille responding to her roommate ad is a man. Nora is driven out of her confidence - and law studies - by the spreading lie that she's video porn star Amber Sweet.

All three central figures work through different conceptions of their selves, moving through their own mistaken identities. Camille leaves his teaching career, then his doctoral studies, to sustain his real estate career. (On the margin, his obese, stuttering sister aspires to an implausible career as standup comedian.) Nora leaves an affair and real estate career with an uncle for the same double duty with Camille. Ultimately she abandons both for an affair with the woman who plays Amber Sweet, i.e., the persona Nora had been mistakenly assigned. Emilie enjoys a free flat but drifts through jobs and affairs before settling back into her opening relationship.

The film's elegant black-and-white composition is briefly interrupted by Amber Sweet's colour video. That is, the more realistic palette is given to the unreal supercharge of eroticism. In all three relationships a genuine emotional connection is impeded by the sexual liberty of the times. Camille and Emilie, Camille and his teaching replacement, Camille and Nora, all slip into a sexual relationship that fails to connect them. The sex precludes mutual understanding.

Hence the double happy ending, which is dependent upon the traditional subordination of sex. The Camille-Emilie relationship starts to work when they are living separately but have reconnected and freely discuss each other's lives (and sex lives). Nora and "Amber" start by Nora buying the video porn star's time to chat online. It advances to unpaid personal facetime conversation, where "Amber" joins Nora in the real-name world. This relationship culminates in the traditional Paris park personal meeting. So the film that originally feels libertine concludes in (relatively) conventional romances.

The film is as reactionary in its politics as in its sexual morality. The dominant black and white makes the Camille-Emilie and Camille-Nora sex scenes seem rebelliously frank. But the black-and-white mix does not hold up. Emilie is not white but Asian. Her ultimate union with Camille unites two outsiders, not a mix with the mainstream. So too the other couple's lesbian union. The happy ending reasserts the conventional racial border. For all the architectural advance of this particular area France here remains a black vs white order.

Dispiriting

[saintgermain-83925 · 3/10 · 5 November 2021]

Goodness I could not disagree more with the other reviewers so far .I found this movie ugly and dispiriting and .frankly,pointless . I am clearly not a millenial and if ,as other reviewers mention,this is a fair reflection of life for millenials in Paris then i pity them, although i frankly do not believe it to be true . The lives portrayed are drab,souless,uninteresting,vapid and vaccuous. Yet not because this inevitable but because these characters choose it to be so . They are mired in their own self absorption and selfishness .The secret of the universe is of course somewhere in the sim card of a mobile phone .

What happened to personal drive ,determination,generosity of spirit ,unselfishness,creativity ,making a better life for self and all ?

If the Director wanted to show the shallowness of this cross section of French society he succeeded . And he also managed to make this area of Paris look so ugly one would never be interested to travel there .This must have been a really difficult task .

Given the desolation of the script the actors made the best of a bad job.

Grand and simple Audiard

[desaparesido00 · 9/10 · 7 October 2022]

A movie you simply can't take eyes of.

Pretty simple, no big dramatic scènes-clés, the movie goes through the sexuality and the emotions of two girls, both beautiful and looking for love.

Shot in one of the ugliest districts of Paris, in a very artistic black&white filter, the camera focus on eyes, hands, nippples - pure emotion and sexuality, without going to vulgarity. The movie could be shot in any other city of the world, but happening in Paris, the city of love, it gives out a simple message - love is everywhere, not only under the Eiffel tower, but as well in the ugly districts. Not only to big movie stars, but as to simple people with simple life and dreams.

Paris, like any other city

[dromasca · 8/10 · 7 March 2022]

'Les Olympiades' is the name of one of the most non-Parisian districts of Paris, a kind of dormitory district with tall buildings and standardized architecture built in the 1970s. It is also the French name for Jacques Audiard's latest (2021) film distributed under the English title 'Paris, 13th District'. Like the atypical Parisian neighborhood that tourists have no reason to visit, 'Les Olympiades' is a rather atypical film for the career of the French director who made some very good films combining the thriller genre with social criticism, bringing to the screen a France less picturesque, but authentic. Celine Sciamma, the screenwriter and director of the excellent 'Portrait de la jeune fille en feu', also collaborated in writing the screenplay, which ensures that the feminist points of view are well represented. After trying his forces over the ocean with a western and he is quite far from the templates ('The Sisters Brothers'), Jacques Audiard continues his cinematic explorations with this film, the story of three young people in Paris today, of their lives filled with stress and problems, of the relationships between them that in the rush of life sometimes lead to sex but almost never to love.

Camille is a (talented) high school teacher who at one point takes a break from teaching to find time for his PhD and works (without talent) on a real estate agency. A misunderstanding leads him to be a co-tenant and share the apartment with Emilie, a girl who lives an intense and messy life. At the agency he meets Nora, who, going through a trauma that the heroine of Radu Jude's 'Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn' would recignize, had dropped out of law school and returned (with talent and without passion) to her job as a real estate agent. The three young people have sex, fall in love, are or are not couples, are looking for each other, separate, get back together. The relationship that starts with sex is the one that eventually turns out to be more stable than the one that starts on the emotional path. However, better not to draw conclusions, because Audiard doesn't try to suggest any morals either.

The plot unfolds smoothly, as Jacques Audiard knows how to tell stories on screen. The cinematography is excellent. Audiard and Paul Guilhomme decided to use (except for one scene) black and white, and the combination with the background of a depersonalized Paris, which could be any other big city in the world, is spectacular. It is in this un-Parisian atmosphere that the script manages to bring into question some of the critical issues of today's urban French society - the infernal pace of life, job insecurity, the multicultural environment and relations between different ethnic communities, the housing crisis - along with other emotional elements valid everywhere - the connections between young people who do not have time to live, the relationship between sex and love, the pressure of the internet social networks. The social-sentimental combination is well balanced. Lucie Zhang, Makita Samba and Noemie Merlant play excellent lead roles. The soundtrack is also interesting and well adapted. 'Les Olympiades' is a film anchored in life, filmed in an unusual Paris, which will definitely attract the interest of many of its viewers.

B/w film but colored life.

[moviesknight · 8/10 · 20 September 2022]

Sometimes filmmakers just go out of the mind, noncoherant. Nothing interesting happening except for the brief scenes in the first half. The second half is lit by Noemie Merlant. She is good and interesting character. Rest all of them are just boring. The pitfalls of sex without love and how it ruins the relations that could have been. But this is how it works in the present world. They tried to introduce a literature character but failed miserably to have conversations. And we never know where we will make connections, it is always in the unexpected places. Connections arent forced. They happen right before our eyes. Happy ending but I didnt see that happening. Total bummer. The way we dont keep contact with the families and only when they are gone we cry. We always modify our memories to bear the burden of our mistakes.

Quite empty

[Castorian · 5/10 · 3 August 2022]

I was very disappointed with this movie. I like Audiard's work, he has made some excellent movies, and I was looking forward to watch this, but I found it empty, with all its supposed sexiness feeling quite shallow. The actors are ok, but their characters are superficial, and I couldn't care less of what happens to them. Even the black and white is not pretty. I think it was selected for Cannes 2021 only because of the reputation of Audiard.

Truly a Great Film

[abih-40449 · 10/10 · 14 November 2023]

I didn't know what to expect from this movie but my approach to films is like my approach to dining I'll try anything once maybe twice and I love surprises and Paris, 13th District fed me a surprise and it was delicious. I love it, I love, I love it from the start to the end. The narration was sweet and equally shared a part in the story itself. It brought a form of art to the film while the film itself laid the story out beautifully. The characters were well developed not the Hollywood version of the predictable Joe or Sally but characters who actually exist but not often portrayed. I highly recommend this movie for those who love movies but seek more than the traditional movie we have all come accustomed to seeing.

terrific and brilliant

[christopher-underwood · 8/10 · 20 January 2024]

An unusual, maybe odd, lovely little film with three girls and a black man who some meet and even more. Emilie is played by Lucie Zhang and works as a telephone salesperson, she's bored and wants some more money by getting a woman roommate. She is Taiwanese and her grandmother has Alzheimer's, unhappy about that as well and then a man turns up for her room. This is Camille (Makita Samba who has done a couple of films and some TV) and she does take him in anyway for a room and she thinks him maybe a lover. Camille is a teacher but ends up doing Real Estate, but he is good-looking and charming. Nora played by Noemie Merlant who has several films as well as Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) and she is thirtyish woman who really is an Estate Agent but wants to back to college instead. The well known actress, Jenny Beth, known from Ex Machina (2014) and Anatomy of a Fall (2023) plays Amber Sweet as a porn star online who becomes confused with Nora, and in the end she gets to chat with her. It is really interesting and things are not the way they might have turned out but certainly a terrific and brilliant film.

charming

[kats_supposed_hobby · 9/10 · 16 August 2023]

There are 3 things for me in this film: music, cinematography, and characters. The plot is light, quite non-existent actually, which works well.

I love the soundtrack, in fact I think I score this movie high mainly because of music. It's not trying too hard, seems quite effortless in a way it carries notes of lonely minimalism, warm melancholy and heaps of hope. It's fits nicely with the architecture of the Olympiades, celebrated by the excellent cinematography.

It's a beautiful movie about people looking for a genuine connection in a relationship. Black and white, and french - not pretentious in the slightest. I found it entertaining and lighthearted, despite some dark undertones. This isn't an ode to Paris represented by the Eiffel tower and puff pastry, it's an ode to Olympiades and therefore the kind of romance that is incredibly down to earth. Like the functional architecture - you don't only need the facade to look nice, you need this to work - relationships are supposed to be built on an authentic connection to last. My understanding of the constant hit-and-miss situations is exactly this - a search for not a perfect, but just the right fit, and the effort (struggle, in one particular case) to cherish it.

I personally find the non-judgmental writing quite refreshing. It seems that everyone in the movie had the right to make unwise decisions and learn nothing from them, and the life still goes on.

And so the characters - with their own agendas, ambitions, backgrounds, traumas, preferences, etc. Are quite an interesting bunch. The interactions and tensions, and the constant hit-and-miss situations, are exactly the plot - there's nothing less or more to it.

This isn't a tale with a moral, it's an uplifting, beautifully made, clever story.

I don't understand

[Watchcelebi · 4/10 · 4 July 2022]

What you see in a black and white frame are three women and a man, sex, sexuality,. I guess I'll have to work harder to understand it. It doesn't seem to be telling me anything. I read the reviews. I know it's an award-winner. I guess it doesn't speak to me.