Paris 13th District
Film8pm
Emilie (Lucie Zhang), an outspoken young telesales operative from a Taiwanese family, meets handsome Camille (Makita Samba), a high school teacher who applies to be her lodger, and quickly becomes her lover. Camille, however, has fallen for Nora (Noémie Merlant, ‘Portrait of a
Lady on Fire’), a law student at the Sorbonne, who in turn becomes fixated by Amber (Jehnny Beth), an online sex-chat worker.
Imaginatively adapted from three stories by US graphic novelist Adrian Tomine, Audiard’s script, co-written by Céline Sciamma and Léa Mysius, relocates the narratives to the titular 13th arrondissement in south-east Paris, on the left bank of the Seine; shot in luminous black and white, his rapturously beautiful ninth feature is a free-wheeling ode to careless young love.
The laconic cool and fleeting hook-ups of Jacques Audiard’s film belie a surprising warmheartedness. The New Yorker
Dir: Jacques Audiard, France, 2021, 105 min