Saw this at the Berlinale 2018, where it was selected for the Panorama section. Every now and then, I was under the impression that I was lured into watching a copy of Woody Allen's "Irrational Man" (2015), his first movie, and hopefully the last, I saw in my life. Both are abundantly filled with name dropping, quotes from famour writers, and more such showing off one's education and literacy. It nonetheless leads us nowhere, leaving an impression of pomposity and verbosity that I cannot stand. But I may be prejudiced in that respect, since many people love such movies, as they assume that it has any bearing on real life, how their life could be improved when living along the guidelines of ancient philosophers and famous writers. But I digress.
Luckily, this movie has a story line that I can live with (contrary to the impossible story in aforementioned "Irrational Man", riddled with plot holes and unreal developments). However, with two hours and a quarter running time "A Paris Education" is a long sit. I wonder about having dozed off one or more times while the talking heads went on and on, as I did not have the impression that it took two hours overall. This may be construed as a compliment, but it does not prove anything given potential festival fatigue. I still may have missed important steps in the proceedings.
However, this is not the type of film where the story line brings us logically from A via B to Z. At first, our main protagonist must get settled in Paris, find new friends and start the education he longed for. The apartment he shares with many others, had been arranged beforehand via-via. He moves in without much ado on his first day in the city. A party that happens on his first evening, does not really include him, but he adapts gradually and finds some people to talk with (and some, like Mathias, he finds so much more educated and well spoken that he assumes never to befriend them). The first lecture day looks very much like the dialogues I hated in aforementioned "Irrational Man", but I noticed that some people in the audience laughed at inexplicable (for me) moments. In retrospect, I assume that the name dropping meant something to them and rang a bell with people more knowledgable about movies than I'll ever be.
Etienne sleeps around a lot, although he swears not to cheat on his fiancée far away. Yet, his relationship with her falters gradually, obviously offering no future for either of the two. It is a perfect demonstration of people drifting apart, as a natural result of their entourages drifting apart. Their pending separation is not caused by some other woman around. He merely exchanges glances and does not make a move to make more out of it, albeit some seem promising at first sight. For example, the secretary of the newspaper where he works for a short period as a reviewer (just for the money), apparently offers a case here with more future in the air, but both let it go (*** spoiler alert ***) until much much later.
All in all, the movie takes its time but does not feel too long, though (see disclaimer above) I may have missed some of the proceedings due to festival fatigue. The dramatic developments are nothing out of the ordinary, apart from the unexpected suicide of one of his friends. I assume that this movie offers more icing on the cake for people knowledgable in the field of film making, or literature or philosophy for that matter, but for a technical guy (IT) like me only the story line and how the protagonists act therein count. That leaves me behind with a feeling of illiteracy in the fields of film making, philosophy and literature, but I can imagine that others more fluent in these fields are better off.
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