Paul and Paulette take a bath
The atrocity kink eventually extends to morbid cosplay, a little like Amélie meets The Nazis: A Warning from History, with Hitler’s bathtub in place of crème brûlée.
Directed by Jethro Massey
Starring: Marie Benati, Jérémie Galiana, Fanny Cottençon
Released 5 September
7/10
The title of Jethro Massey’s debut feature carries an echo of Jacques Rivette’s dreamy 1974 fantasia Céline and Julie Go Boating. Like Rivette’s heroines, Paul and Paulette are drifting twentysomethings, itching to escape the everyday boredom of their Parisian lives - but with a distinctly morbid twist. When they meet, Paul, a US expat and would-be photographer, finds Paulette, une gamine maniaque, on the Place de la Concorde, trying to figure out the exact spot where Marie Antoinette was guillotined.
The winsome couple bond over a shared fascination with extremity lurking in plain sight - the wall where the communards were shot, the human zoo where Madagascans and Sudanese were installed as a living tribute to the glories of French empire, the bridge where Parisian cops dumped dead Algerians into the Seine. Their atrocity kink eventually extends to morbid cosplay, a little like Amélie meets The Nazis: A Warning from History, with Hitler’s bathtub in place of crème brûlée.
Paul and Paulette hints at a spectacularly black screwball comedy to be made from imperial horrors, but resolves a little queasily into a more conventional romance of family dysfunction. But there’s enough to suggest that Massey might be a director to keep tabs on.
