Paris Can Wait

source: Paris Can Wait

there is no story here. i don't even know what this thing is. i don't know how they convinced 2 Hollywood stars to be in it - but only one of them actually plays the lead role opposite some C lister. it's basically about a married woman hitching a ride to Paris with a french glutton. she takes pics of everything with a digital camera - but uses the viewing window instead of the screen display - i don't know anyone who does this or what the point of it was - it's so weird. total snoozer.

Eleanor Coppola's directorial debut. A cute movie about a wife with blocked ears - skipping a plane ride and being driven up through France to Paris by her husband's business associate. "Watch out dear - he's a Frenchman....". The food and museums and attractions are a backdrop to a 'will they/wont they' tale. No particular morality explored - just a couple thrown together by circumstance. The movie is in English - but French people speak French and you don't get subtitles. Which is kinda fun - because then you know how Diane Lane's character feels when she doesn't fully comprehend what is going on and how she is about to be (or not) swept along by events. If you DO speak French then it is (....spoiler....). There is a set up at the end for the obvious follow up movie.....

Can you go wrong with a movie featuring Diane Lane, French food and scenery, directed by a Coppola? Apparently yes. First, the dreary cinematography makes the French countryside look unappealing. How do you manage that? The movie is slow, there is no chemistry between the leads and the whole thing is a giant cliché. Even the ever watchable Diane Lane turns in a one-note performance, relying on familiar expressions. We've seen this performance before in better movies. I just don't get all the good reviews. I expected a lot more.

"Paris Can Wait" (2016 release; 92 min.) brings the story of Anne and Jacques. As the movie opens, Anne and her husband Michael, a movie producer, are in Cannes and ready to fly to their next location, Budapest. But because Anne has an earache that would only get worse from the in-flight cabin pressure, she decides to go on directly to Paris, where she'll wait for Michael to catch up. Jacques, a business partner of Michael's, by coincidence is driving to Paris and offers her a ride. Off they go, and it's not long before Jacques makes frequent stops to sample the local "cuisine" and show local landmarks to Anne. At this point we're 10 min. into the movie but to tell you more off the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out. Couple of comments: writer-director Eleanor Coppola (wife of Francis Ford) has been in the movie industry for decades, mostly as a documentarian, and so now, Elelanor, a crispy 80 years young, makes her debut as a fiction feature-length director. Wow. Here she brings us what amounts to a road movie with a romcom undertone, plus a foodie splash for good measure. If you have seen the trailer (which had been playing prominently in recent weeks), the movie plays EXACTLY as you'd expect from the trailer. The only element of the slightest surprise/mystery is: will they or won't they (Anne and Jacques) fall for each other? But even that is almost besides the point, as we watch what amounts to a 90 min. commercial for "la douce vie en France" (the sweet life in France). There are so many restaurant scenes, involving the most delicious dishes and wines, that it feels like the theater should been serving something too. At least, that is what came in my head when Jacques ordered a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and I thought "where is ours?". Diana Lane is delightful as Anne, radiating pretty much like she did in "Under the Tuscan Son" from over a decade ago. Alec Baldwin is perfect s the neglectful husband, and veteran French actor Arnaud Viard is fine as Jacques. "Paris Can Wait" opened this weekend at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati. The Saturday matinée screening was very well attended, even more so for being a matinée. I can see this film becoming a hit on the art-house theater circuit. For me personally the movie was just a little too straight-forward, and if I wanted to watch a commercial of the south of France, I could've done that for free on the French Tourist Buearu's website. But Diane Lane provides a saving grace (to a degree), so it's all good.

"Paris Can Wait" is one of those escape type drift away movies that has one to reflect on the fine things in life like arts, culture, great food and wine, it proves that for so long that life can be carefree. Set in the south of France with Anne(Diane Lane)a middle age woman who's going thru the middle roads of life, decides to break away from her husband a tough and work a lot movie producer(Alec Baldwin). And Anne takes a road trip to Paris, with one of her husband's best friends and on the road trip it's a journey of thought and seeing of the sights for Anne. Really it's an adventure of arts, wine, and food. Also underneath it all reflection and memories and escape all are written over Anne's face, plus a possible new love and romance interest seems to begin. Overall good escape film that shows one can drift away from the present life with an adventure journey.

I don't get the low rating for this film. As a man, I can understand how it would be borderline boring, but still it is a good movie, with good acting and very beautiful content. I went through a trip in France, with the great lighting and the great food and the beautiful countryside and I can tell you it's truly what women want. My wife was happy for months. And this is the film adaptation of such a trip, written and directed by Eleanor Coppola. There are two problems with this film. One is that this is about rich people traveling through France and getting the best of the best from fancy restaurants and places for the in-people. That can annoy some folk. The other is that there really is no story. There's just a French guy trying to woo a beautiful American married woman. One can learn a lot from this film, too. Basically, the writer says "hey, men that take their wives for granted! Your women want romance!". OK, that can be annoying, too, but also serves as a manual on how women would like to be made to feel. Bottom line: a true romantic road trip movie, with no pointless comedy or drama added. Refreshing and inspiring.

You'd think Eleanor Coppola - wife of Francis and mother of Sofia - would have picked up a few tips about film-making over the years. Even just listening to Francis on the phone or asking Sofia how she's getting on with work. But, no, clearly not. Mama Coppola has no feel whatsoever for romantic-comedy, no clue about what makes a character interesting or believable, no concept of pace or tension, and apparently no interest in dialogue that is anything but banal. What she puts on the screen doesn't much resemble a movie at all, to be brutally honest. At best, Paris Can Wait comes across like a lavish, but not particularly compelling travelogue, fully funded by the French Tourist Bureau. At worst, it evokes some rather dull American housewife's Youtube vlog of her European vacation. You'd also think any movie starring Diane Lane can't be too bad. But Lane - normally watchable in just about anything - is so stretched by the thinness of the material here that her attempts to inject some degree of fun and tension into scenes quickly becomes tedious. It doesn't help that her character is infuriatingly passive and pliable for a supposedly successful businesswoman and the well-traveled wife of a film producer. She doesn't balk at being hijacked on her drive to Paris, or having her credit card snaffled for expensive meals and hotels, and she's astonishingly slow to question the motives of a man who takes liberties and takes advantage at every turn. All in all, Paris Can Wait is an insult to the menopausal women it is so clearly setting out to exploit. The two points are purely for the French cuisine along the way - all of it fully described and scrupulously photographed, as though each canard and poisson is another character in the film. And they might as well be.

I patiently watched this movie. Big names, provance, food; it can't go bad (boy I was wrong). This movie is made by someone who probably never been to France and Europe, who have seen many movies in Souther France and wanted to copy scenes from each of them. The acting was pretentious and obvious. It was waste of time and money. It has no theme, no purpose. You keep waiting that the story leads to something, anything, but every scene ends op to nothing. I am stunned by previous reviews here, and how they liked this movie. Incredible.

A good story by writer and producer Eleanor Coppola was enhanced by a tour my wife and I took from Juan-les-Pins in 2006, and a really fun group with us on the bus. We spent more time on the beaches in Nice, Cannes, and San Trope. So does a similar story by Patricia Sands, "The Promise of Provence" spends more time in Cannes, with a master chef, shopping for food, tasting cheeses, and falling in love after a nasty divorce from a man like Baldwin's character. My own photos capture our memories. I could live in Cannes. My wife would not. We would take another tour, the long way to Paris. A tour of Tuscany comes first, and this movie sets the stage.