The eclectic veteran French director Jacques Audiard shifts gears yet again (his last feature was 2018’s unusual western, The Sisters Brothers) with Paris, 13th District (Les Olympiades), an …
, an adaptation of stories by the American comic book writer and artist Adrian Tomine. It’s an oddly segmented affair that involves a great deal of sex — quite a bit of it thwarted or in other ways less than satisfactory, at least where the women are concerned — is shot predominantly in black-and-white and seems more like tasty samplings from a smorgasbord rather than a full meal.
The acting and filmmaking are of a quality that keeps things afloat, and the script by Audiard, Lea Mysius and Celinne Sciamma, the latter the celebrated creator of, supplies plenty of frank talk about sex. But since so much of the sex looks to have been unfulfilling and/or loaded with expectations that rarely get met, there’s something missing here in the form of a discussion about the void, the lack of substance or blockage when it comes to intimate relations.
At the same time, this is not a study of cultural ennui. Everyone’s into real stuff like working and achieving a certain level of satisfaction, and all are free to pursue their interests and make money; times have been worse. But no one seems passionate about either what they do or what they aspire to become; because of the quickness of life and the general availability of immediate satisfaction, be it from sex or drugs or money, loftier or more noble aims have rather fallen to the side.
This is not a despairing work, just a concerning one when it comes to things like modern aspirations, mutual fulfillment and attention spans. As pictured here, the current generation has trouble seeing the forest the trees and may well be stuck in them.
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