Few films have accurately captured the definitive Millennial experience—lovelorn, cash-strapped, self-absorbed, and tech-addicted—though a few have tried, and some even succeeded. Modern love is no joke, as films and shows like “Frances Ha” and “Girls” know, and neither is modern friendship, or any part of early adulthood these days. Friendship, love, and all the strange gradations in between coalesce at the center of Jacques Audiard’s quartet romance, “Paris, 13th District” (“Les Olympiades”), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. When Émilie (Lucie Zhang), a telemarketer as bored with her job as she is with her life, puts an ad out for a roommate to move into her grandmother’s spacious apartment, she doesn’t expect Camille (Makita Samba), a witty, hardworking English teacher who is decidedly not a woman. One thing leads to another, and Émilie and Camille start hooking up, and in true Harry and Sally form, sex complicates the apartment dynamic irrevocably. Soon enough, Camille starts hooking up with Nora (Noémie Merlant, fresh from a breakout role in 2019’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”), a 33-year-old law student who moves to Paris from Bordeaux to complete her degree. Nora has her own independent storyline, too: Awkward and a bit insecure, she wears a blond wig to a student party only to be mistaken for a well-known cam girl named Amber Sweet (Jehnny Beth). The ostracism and bullying by her classmates are almost too much to bear until Nora finds an unlikely supporter in the real Amber Sweet herself, whom she befriends over a series of paid video chats.
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Shot in black and white and based on comic book short stories by Adam Tomine, “Paris, 13th District” feels like Audiard’s attempt to inaugurate a Millennial New Wave, “Jules and Jim,” but with a synth-pop soundtrack courtesy of Rone. Though the film feels at times like a sociological manifesto on modern love penned by an older generation, its writing team, which includes Audiard, Léa Mysius, and “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” writer Céline Sciamma, manages to capture both the real pitfalls and bouts of joy inherent to twentysomethings’ relationships. In particular, Sciamma’s contribution is palpable in the film’s vibrant portrayal of young people and their romances. The film is not shy about sexuality, nor about drugs; its characters party hard and hook up, but pivotally can’t seem to connect or find honest, uncomplicated relationships. Full of fresh faces and unique stories, “Paris, 13th District” makes a case for genuine connections in a culture bent on transposing them into commodified products. Yet certain plot points are better integrated than others—a subplot about Émilie’s dying grandmother never seems fully justified. And an ending reminiscent of Shakespearean comedy, in which all four leads must resolve their problems with monogamous coupledom, suggests a certain marriage plot traditionalism for a film that stylizes itself as modern.
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Though it’s set in the world capital of romance, the visual language of “Paris, 13th District” is anything but romantic; its aesthetic coldness reflects a kind of urban malaise. In black and white, Audiard trains his camera on the eponymous Brutalist towers, les Olympiades, constructed during the ’70s and named for Olympic host countries. Their scale is vertiginous and, in effect, anonymizing; Audiard fixates on Émilie’s ennui, the cyclicality of her desk job, for which she is grossly over-qualified (Camille notes this when she reveals that she studied at Sciences Po, one of Paris’ more prestigious university programs). This mismatch of education and vocation is a particular fascination of “Paris, 13th District”; Camille, too, studies for a philosophy doctorate yet finds himself working at a real estate agency to pay the rent. There’s a kind of studied everyday-ness to the film’s choices; its characters are middle-class types, not children of the privileged upper class weaned on trust funds and silver spoons, and the strain of economic need (not necessarily destitution, but not comfortable wealth, either) provides a distinctly modern backdrop to its characters’ struggles.
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As if the never-ending treadmill of capitalism weren’t anonymizing enough, the characters in “Paris, 13th District” also grapple with the effects of technology, which has an unpleasant way of commodifying and gamifying intimate relationships. Émilie, for instance, seeks gratification with dating apps, only to remain hung up on Camille. Camille, in turn, struggles to connect with Nora, who transposes her real emotional intimacy into paid video chat sessions with Amber. Screens and online texts can be a grating presence in contemporary films, not to mention a way of dating them with technology that quickly becomes obsolete; “Paris, 13th District” only dips a toe into this pitfall, with graphics that seem generic and elementary but are kept to a minimum. And they’re a usefully bland counterpoint to the real thrill of watching the actors’ onscreen chemistry, which vibrates on the screen even in black and white. Zhang and Samba, in particular, capture the real frissons of desire; we know to want them back when they split up and start seeing lesser matches.
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Still, “Paris, 13th District” isn’t satisfied with just one coupling; it demands that all its characters make harmonious matches before it can leave them behind. Though nobody’s storyline concludes with a proposal or a ring, characters’ reconciliations feel like the Millennial equivalent (half-heartedly committing to an event and then actually showing up on time). It’s a happy ending, but a generic one. Even for a film that purports to be about modern love and modern people, old story habits run deep. [B+]
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