Now is the summer’s discontent for some of us, when any moment not spent on a beach or a mountain, when instead you must tend to work or literally anything else, is some kind of vulgar torture that insults the grace of life itself. To you, we say: Stay strong, and perhaps rejuvenate your spirit with a visit to the old Ritz Five, and take in a showing of Lost In Paris, a movie so sublime it’s both a wonder it got made at all and it’s even more of a wonder that more movies like this aren’t there to softly catch us in these terrible times. And we can’t understand why we haven’t heard a single other person mention it.
The movie uses both of the only two plots John Gardner once famously said there are: A person goes on a journey, and a stranger comes to town. But through the premise of a Canadian librarian going to Paris to visit her long-lost (and busily senile) aunt, writers/directors/stars Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon wreak a kind of fun that’s simple and visual and universal. Lost In Paris plays with color in a way few movies have the guts to now — Wes Anderson does, and TV commercials do, but that’s about it — and goes all-in on a kind of elegant, sweet physical comedy that otherwise might not be present in contemporary cinema at all. Abel and Gordon are upfront that the film is an homage to Jacques Tati, but they’re also adapting so much of this stuff for today. A selfie on a bridge goes horribly awry and ends with some slapstick underwater; a homeless guy’s tent takes to dancing; a home-care hospice nurse gets fooled by the same PDA gag over and over. Meanwhile, there’s not even a lot of dialogue — so much is done with color and body movement that Lost In Paris is as much a dance performance as it is a movie. And boy, what a movie it is.
According to our latest info, Lost In Paris will be playing at the Ritz Five at least until August 9th. Check here for showtimes.