Directed by Jacques Audiard
Written by Jacques Audiard, Léa Mysius, Céline Sciamma, and Nicolas Livecchi
Based on stories by Adrian Tomine
Starring Lucie Zhang, Makita Samba, Noémie Merlant
Running time 1 hour 45 minutes
MPAA rating R
In select theaters on April 15

by Jaime Davis, Staff Writer

In the spring of 2011, during a one-week trip to Paris, I found myself getting off the Olympiades metro stop and walking down the Avenue d’Ivry in the city’s 13th arrondissement, far from the wide-eyed tourists parading through all the the glitz and glamour of the typical must-go spots. It was one of my first real trips outside of North America and I wasn’t sure if I could ever afford to really travel again, so my intention was to really see Paris. Not just the must-go places, which I indulged in, but other parts of the city, ones where everyday Parisians lived their lives on the daily.

On this particular day of the trip, we were on a quest for the perfect bánh mì, and in the heart of the Asian district within the 13th, on the Avenue d’Ivry, we picked up a few sandwiches (yes, a few!) and strolled by a local elementary school before finding a small area with a bench where we could sit and eat. We silently nibbled while listening to the chatter of school children heading to playdates or towards adventures, spying the 13th’s looming, modern apartment towers in the near distance. It was in this calm moment that Paris looked rose-tinged and homey-comfy, like the sweater you wrap yourself in on the first truly cold day of the year. It was a blissful few minutes of complete peace that I bet many Parisian tourists have felt at one time or another during their visit. I couldn’t stop thinking: what would it be like to actually call this city home?

I was reminded of this moment during director Jacques Audiard’s latest, Paris, 13th District (Les Olympiades), a Parisian romance set within this particular arrondissement that feels highly modern in its depiction of relationships often contending with boundaries and technology. Co-written by Audiard, filmmaker Céline Sciamma, Léa Mysius and Nicolas Livecchi, the script is based on stories by the graphic novelist Adrian Tomine, whose body of work I’ve long been a fan of. The film loosely adapts stories from Tomine’s Killing and Dying and Summer Blonde, ultimately focusing on our main characters Émilie, Camille, and Nora in interlocking segments.

Émilie (Lucie Zhang) is an underemployed call center rep who lives rent-free in her grandmother’s apartment yet can’t bring herself to visit her in the memory care facility she resides in nearby. Instead, she offers people discounted rent in exchange for visiting her grandmother and pockets their rent money for other expenses. I don’t blame her necessarily - her job seems pretty horrible, like one big microaggression after another. Her boss calls her “Ms. Wang'' - her last name is Wong. With customers, she goes by the more traditional French-sounding name of “Maryline Dumont,” presumably to avoid any prejudice on the phone. Why not be an easy landlord and make a little money on the side? When charismatic Camille (Makita Samba) comes calling as a potential new roomie, Émilie senses a little danger, putting up the boundaries before forgetting them entirely. Sex between them comes as quickly and as naturally as making a bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats in the morning, but Camille is quick to assert they’re not in a relationship. Soon, however Camille is moving on - seems he does want a relationship, just not with Émilie.

Camille moves on and then moves on again, this time with Nora (Noémie Merlant), who, like the electric oven in my kitchen, takes an inordinately long time to warm up. Nora’s hesitation makes sense in the grand scheme of things - scarred by a past love, she moves to Paris to enter law school and start fresh. As a new student, she immediately falls out of step with her fellow peers, most of whom are more than a few years younger than her. Seeking friends, she attends a college party, wearing a cool outfit and a cool blonde wig, only to be mistaken for well-known Parisan cam girl Amber Sweet. Some of the more immature folks in her class take it upon themselves to shun Nora for her perceived proclivities (like seriously kids, let’s normalize sex work. Also law school is hard. Mind your business and crack a book.) Sensitive Nora can’t handle it and reverts back to real estate, the field she worked in prior to law school. She meets Camille in her new job, and just like Émilie, she puts down the rules only to abandon them shortly thereafter. Nora just can’t help but like Camille, but when she tries to feel more for him, both emotionally and physically, her heart fails to warm. Eventually, Nora breaks away, seeking out the real Amber Sweet while Émilie waits in the wings. 

Paris, 13th District quietly untangles the complications that stem from the forever-at-odds hookup culture and cuffing season using the 13th arrondissement as background character, one that’s not often explored in much of the French cinema and tv shows that make their way outside of the country. The film’s backdrop notwithstanding, Émilie and Camille’s ethnicities are only tangentially tied to the plot within their particular stories (however there are plenty of other standout French films within the last decade more fully exploring the lives of racialized persons in France - Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood, 2019’s Les Misérables, 2016’s Divines, and Audiard’s Dheepan).

Despite the lack of development in some of the characters’ worldviews, it’s refreshing to see romance play out within a less whitewashed cast. Using a simple palette of (mostly) black and white, the film feels stylish and modern and cool, many of the same adjectives used to describe (and sometimes deride) Adrian Tomine’s work, but the script tries to etch more shading into areas where perhaps the original stories didn’t go. For these young Parisians just trying to find their way, trying to live up (or not) to ideals set out for them, they yearn for something they need in others yet can’t always grasp. The happy ending that comes for our trio of characters is indeed rose-tinged, yet thoroughly realistic and perfectly of the moment. In Paris, 13th District, Les Olympiades is its own character, its high-rise complexes towering over its inhabitants, far from the crowds of tourists, like me, who wish they called Paris their own.