Paul and Paulette Take A Bath is a macabre twist on the romcom trope, a first feature by writer/director Jethro Massey.
Romcom Macabre
Paul and Paulette Take A Bath
0.0 out of 5.0 stars
CAUTION: Here be spoilers
It seemed like a great idea but it didn’t work for me, even as an imaginative twist on the romcom. Not even a comic one. Nor did the soundtrack. You may disagree. My big surprise was that it was in English – with lots of swear words – not French, although there was a smattering of French to show it was France.
Paul (Jérémie Gallana) is an American in Paris and Paulette (Marie Benati) is the manic pixie dream girl he meets. They bond through sharing a macabre interest in visiting sites from Paris’s violent history, where people died.
He first sees her on her knees reenacting Marie Antoinette’s guillotining on the spot where she was executed. Paulette seems to sense something in the atmosphere in those places of death and murder she visits and Paul is surprisingly knowledgeable about them.
But it’s still weird, despite the retrospective voiceovers. The writer/director (Anglo-French Jethro Massey, with his first feature) seems to be in love with Paris and his idea of the French. It’s touristically shot. There’s a superfluous subplot of their staying unsuccessfully with Paulette’s parents and her misunderstood coming out to them. Other subplots that don’t add a lot are Paulette’s break-up with her partner, a louche club scene and Paul’s affair with his boss. Ooh-la-la, how very French, etc.
And the bath? The central shot (about halfway in this rather disjointed film, which doesn’t fully live up to the promise of its quirky title) is faithful to the iconic postwar photo of Lee Miller in Hitler’s bath, which allegedly inspired it – but Paul and Paulette share it and that’s all. The oppressive dark-green bathroom tiles reminded me of pictures online of Romanian dictator Ceauçescu’s home. If only Paul and Paulette could have had football idiom’s “early bath”.
Paul and Paulette Take A Bath won the Critic’s Week Audience Award and the Cinema & Arts Award at the Venice Film Festival 2024, and the Best Actress Award at the Monte Carlo Comedy Film Festival 2024 for Marie Benati’s performance. It is released on 5 September in the UK.
