I’m a longstanding fan of the Texas-born filmmaker Richard Linklater. “Slacker” (1990) didn’t really resonate with me— or maybe I was just a touch too young. But as a late-stage Gen-Xer, I was, like almost everyone else in my age cohort, predictably swept up in the romance of “Before Sunrise” (1995). I mean, the all-night philosophical conversations. Nocturnal Vienna as the lushest of impressionistic backdrops. The still baby-faced, bright-eyed Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. What else could a teenager who spent hours reading the diaries of Anaïs Nin and was already plotting to move to Paris someday want from a film? I had crushes on both actors, of course.

Later, I was just as predictably heartbroken by “Before Midnight” (2013), the final film in what ended up being a trilogy. It deploys the same actors and characters to make a ruthless point about the passage of time, aging and the inevitable wear-and-tear that relationships go through as they submit to both forces. No spoilers here— just go see the films if you haven’t yet.

For me and many of my generation, Linklater’s trilogy acts as a temporal mirror, showing us how much we’ve aged, how our 20-something ideals of soulmates or fashioning new selves through travel abroad end up battered by the mundane pressures of work, raising children, and the yawning gap between our aspirations and what we’ve actually ended up doing. That's precisely the genius of these films, alongside the fact that much of the dialogue was improvised on the spot by Delpy and Hawke. Linklater likes to encourage that kind of spontaneity, which is no doubt part of the reason why we’re halfway convinced Jesse and Céline are nonfictional characters.

Later, after seeing “Boyhood” on the big screen in 2014, I was bowled over by how Linklater followed, and filmed, the same young actor over 12 years, yielding an uncannily naturalistic portrait of a child moving into gawky adolescence then into early adulthood. I remember thinking to myself at the time that Linklater had almost bested French filmmaker François Truffaut at his own creative gambit.

Truffaut had, famously, hired the child actor Jean-Pierre Léaud to star in his debut film, “Les 400 Coups” (The 400 Blows) (1959), about a child delinquent and his misadventures in working-class Paris. Léaud then went on to appear in several subsequent films as the same character, Antoine Doinel. Antoine had grown up, becoming a military drop-out, a dandy and a womanizer— and Truffaut ended up (at first unwittingly) constructing the same character over two decades.

His Antoine Doinel joints, alongside his friend Jean-Luc Godard’s debut film “A Bout de Souffle” (“Breathless”, 1960), were my gateway drugs to the Nouvelle Vague, or French “New Wave” cinema. While it’s hard to neatly define a movement whose founding members made very different films, let’s keep things simple. This was an informal movement led by a coterie of critics and artists, including Truffaut, Godard, Agnès Varda, Alain Resnais and others, who wanted to inject a sense of radical modernity, irreverence, realism and playful experimentation into a French cinema they considered stale and moribund. So they ended up directing films in order to manifest onscreen the sorts of things they imagined.

(Read my previous review of Varda’s brilliant documentary about her last Parisian neighborhood below):

Let’s circle back to Linklater. While I’d related “Boyhood” to the films of Truffaut and suspected that Linklater may have been inspired by the Antoine Doinel films in capturing the same actor and character over many years for his own film, I hadn’t realized what a student and devotee of French New Wave cinema he was.

Until now.

With “Nouvelle Vague”, Linklater has made a gleeful coming out as the sort of New Wave geek I’d encountered as a college student, and could never quite bring myself to be (though I secretly envied their too-cool-for-school personae). The sort of person who collects vintage back issues of Cahiers du Cinéma, the film- crit magazine where Truffaut, Godard, Claude Chabrol, Alain Resnais and other directors earned their chops as critics before jumping headfirst into directing.

The sort of person who wears dark Godard sunglasses, sixties-style Hats and suits à la Mad Men, or paints on eyeliner and grows black bangs to mimic the style of Godard’s muse and partner Anna Karina. The sort of person who knows the names of all the cameramen, production designers and makeup artists on Eric Rohmer’s most obscure film, and whose dorm room is studded with posters for Godard’s “Pierrot le Fou” and Varda’s “Cléo de 5 à 7”.

{Side note: judging from recent photos of Linklater I’ve perused online, he still cuts the figure of a scruffy, long-haired Texan progressive who spends a lot of time in Hollywood— no Godardish glasses or cigarettes in sight, so I’m being a bit glib here. Also, our living room currently features a poster of “Cléo de 5 à 7”}.

Again, I digress. I saw Linklater’s latest movie a couple of weeks ago on the big screen, and I’m so glad I made that choice. Streaming it at home wouldn’t have done it justice, nor accorded with the fact that “Nouvelle Vague” is partly a tribute to the sort of cinema-making that’s simply disappeared in the digital age.

From the opening shots, it’s clear that every pain has been taken to reproduce the look and feel of late 1950s cinema, and specifically Godard’s sensually immediate, documentary-style techniques. Linklater shot the film in black-and-white, and on 35mm film— using a now rarely-used aspect ratio that narrows the image slightly and lends a more intimate feel. While it was mostly shot on digital, the analog vibes are intense: you can even see scratchy little cue marks, or “cigarette burns” appear at the corner of the screen, in a nostalgic nod to the reel change cues of yore.

Much to my relief, Linklater avoided the impulse to “Anglicize” things: the film is almost entirely in French, with a nearly all-French crew— one exception (aside from Linklater himself) being Zoey Deutch, who plays the American actress Jean Seberg and her “Breathless” character “Pah-tree-see-ah” (Patricia) to uncanny, gamine perfection.

I had to pinch myself a few times to remind myself that this was a film from an American director, because it was probably the Frenchest thing I’d seen in a long time— you could just feel it from the texture of the visuals, the pacing and spirit of the script, and the overall approach to filmmaking. “I wanted the best, most experienced French department heads we could find, and I feel so grateful to have worked with such a dedicated group. I think our sincere enthusiasm opened a lot of doors,”Linklater told Alex Kelly for Todum (Netflix).

The streets of Paris circa 1959, especially Montparnasse and an Avenue des Champs-Elysées that’s even more smog-choked than it is today, are lovingly and meticulously reproduced in the film. I have no idea how Linklater and cinematographer David Chambille filmed around the telltale clues of 21st century Paris, from wide bike lanes to vape shops, electric car charging stations and contemporary signage. Whether they used CGI (unlikely) or just cleverly staged their shots, the feeling of being immersed in Paris at the turn of the ‘60s is absolute. I guess it helps that certain areas, including Montparnasse, feature many streets, bistrots and shops that haven’t changed much at all since the late 1950s.

Linklater and Chambille also drew on an exceptionally rich cache of film documentation for Godard’s “Breathless”, including “ behind-the-scenes photography to camera reports, letters, memoirs, and interviews”. This allowed them to meticulously reproduce the sets and shooting conditions for the original film.

On to the plot (finally, you sigh!): A young, smartass film critic and wannabe director named Jean-Luc Godard is nursing an insecurity— he was supposed to have directed a feature film by the age of 25, and so far, he’s only put out a short. His friends and fellow critics Francois Truffaut and Claude Chabrol have already had well-received directorial debuts, and Truffaut is set to be lauded at Cannes for “Les 400 Coups”.

Goaded on by his chain-smoking friends, Godard (played by relative newcomer Guillaume Marbeck) heads to Cannes and pitches a producer to let him make a film based on a loose script he’d co-written with Truffaut years earlier. He’s greenlighted, but with a firm warning: it has to be entertaining— a straight-up true-crime and love story, based on a well-known “fait divers” (recent news story). Nothing too avant-garde.

A young boxer and petty criminal named Michel Poiccard (played by Jean-Paul Belmondo), misguided by his love for American gangster movies with Humphrey Bogart, steals a car in Marseille and is stopped by a cop on the way north to Paris. He impulsively shoots and kills the officer, and returns to Paris. There, he meets a young American student named Patricia Franchini (Seberg), who wants to be a reporter but for the time being hawks The International Herald Tribune on the streets of Paris, advertising the paper on her black-and-white tee. A quirky love affair, and predictable tragedy, ensues.

But while the story itself was at base full of familiar tropes and plot progressions, Godard’s take on it would not be predicatable— to the exasperation of his producer, actors and crew. From the beginning, the director embraces odd silences, plot holes, long, improvised scenes with little or no scripting, and renegade filming techniques that put both actors and camera crew on the spot, forcing them to work from pure instinct. He also only shoots as much as he feels like each day— and some days, that’s zero. The clock is ticking on his 20 days, and his producer is increasingly angered by the prospect that his investment will go up in smoke.

Linklater lovingly documents the making of “Breathless” as a 20-day, madcap experiment filled with moments of humor, exasperation, fortuitous moments and choices that end up— improbably— yielding a remarkable and completely original film once it emerges from the cutting room.

There’s plenty of humor here, including a scene that documents Godard’s (true-to-life) insistence that his main cameraman hide under a covered trolley and film scenes on the Champs-Elysees from a cleverly-cut hole. The fact that the film was shot with no sound and had to be dubbed in post-production also yielded amusing moments of confusion, and allowed the actors to chat about other things and even rant about their annoying director as they played the scene.

As Godard, Marbeck is dryly funny and charismatic, never once removing his dark glasses or extricating the cigarette from his mouth. He faithfully replicates the filmmaker’s Swiss-French accent and verbal tics, and delivers endless existential observations that poke gentle fun at Godard’s famous pretentiousness.

I did sort of yearn to see a less caricatural version of the director, about whom I know very little. Yet this wasn’t a biopic, nor would it have worked as one. It was a tribute to Godard’s wacky and brilliant filmmaking, so too much “backstory” or psychological probing would likely have felt misplaced.

As Seberg, Zoe Deutch masterfully embodied Seberg’s gamine physicality and charm, and the script highlights the acerbic wit behind the naive, heavily American-accented persona. Again, it might have been interesting to see something of Seberg’s vulnerability, which we glimpse in only a couple of short scenes— but perhaps that’s the task of a different film. You can read more on Seberg and her short, tragedy-strewn life in my portrait of eight American women who uprooted to Paris, then made history (at Paris Unlocked).

One of the things I both liked a lot about the film, but simultaneously found a bit infuriating from an audience perspective, is how Linklater periodically stops to highlight people who were important to the Nouvelle Vague movement — from critics to producers and cameramen, gaffes and editors— with brief close-ups and flashes of their names on the screen, without further explanation. Most of the time, we never see these people again over the course of the film.

On one level, I appreciated that this was his way of paying homage to the many, many people behind the making of a film or a genre. On another, it felt like a grating interruption that provided only superficial information— who are most of these people? Those curious enough can go look them up after the film ends, if their names are remembered at all. Godard would likely have appreciated the technique, as he was himself a fan of introducing irritations and breakages into his films, whether in the plot, through asynchronous sounds, or otherwise.

My overall take? Run to see this film on the big screen while you still can, o ye fans of la nouvelle vague. For those of you who haven’t yet seen “Breathless”, or who know little-to-nothing about the French New Wave, this isn’t going to be a very enjoyable film, aside from the sheer aesthetic experience. I suggest you watch, at minimum, Godard’s debut film before attempting “Nouvelle Vague”.

Taking the time to get to know a few other classics from the period would be even better. Truffaut’s “400 Coups”, Varda’s “Chloé de 5 à 7”, Rohmer’s “Claire’s Knee” and Alain Resnais’ “Hiroshima Mon Amour” are all ones I recommend. Peruse this handy list from BFI for more suggestions, and tips on where to stream.

Then again, as someone who weirdly enjoys being plunged into things and places I know nothing about, then working backward to fill in the blanks, perhaps it would be a fun ride to start with Linklater’s geeky tribute before gaining some knowledge of the original and its accompanying movement. If you attempt this, please let me know how it goes— I love these sorts of experiments.

Well, that’s about it for today’s ramblings, les ami/es. Come back next month for a March update from Paris by our Associate Editor Rachel Naismith, who will be offering all kinds of seasonal suggestions and talking about things on her radar (and tickling her palate) in the capital this spring.

Thanks so much for being part of this little community of readers. You make this sometimes-lonely endeavor more than worthwhile. And your ongoing support is so vital.

If you’re able to, please consider becoming a “Donor” subscriber or “Star Supporter”. For less than a cost of a couple of barista coffee drinks every month, you’ll get access to our ample archive of Paris and France-related features, opinion pieces, film & TV reviews, travel tips & in-depth itineraries— plus a free consultation with Courtney by email, to help you plan any future trips and offer personalized suggestions for your stay.

You’ll also be lending precious support to the development of my podcast project, which will explore French culture from various angles — history, food, cultural trends, the arts and literature — and hopefully be as addictive as it is informative. At the moment, I plan to drop a few first episodes for Season 1, exploring Great French Icons of the 20th Century, in early summer. The teaser image below offers some clues as to the extraordinary people featured in the series.

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Please make sure to comment below if you’re hoping to see something in particular covered here, or at Paris Unlocked. You can also write to me here: editor@parisunlocked.com. I do my best to respond to all reader queries, comments and suggestions as soon as possible.

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Ouf! (as the French say): resuming a more-or-less full-time work schedule while still navigating the messy, tender, infuriating and sleepless first few weeks with a new baby is…interesting. Let’s leave it at that. This isn’t a “Mommy blog”; I won’t regale you with too many specifics on how falling into two-kid-parenthood has made my life feel a bit like an improvisational jazz show. But between my desperate desire for sleep and my recent decision to cut way back on caffeine, I just haven’t had the same drive lately to pound the keyboard and grind out words. At least not ones that will be seen immediately.

As mentioned in a previous post, I’m now focusing on a longer-term project that you will hopefully see the fruits of sometime in the spring of next year. And these sorts of projects, I get the impression, require a deeper, more lateral kind of thinking. One that doesn’t depend quite so much on the rapidfire dance from brain to keys, the “at-attention”, ready-for-action state that caffeine so often facilitates. On these points, see Michael Pollan’s fascinating meditation on how coffee might have rewired our brains en masse, and made us good little capitalist soldiers.

Hmm, can you tell that I’m still really missing it? I partly blame my romantic associations between writing and coffee on people like Voltaire, the 18th-century philosopher who reportedly guzzled 40-50 cups of it a day, crediting it for his incisive and creative thinking.

Some even surmise that coffee helped usher in the French Revolution, since Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau and other philosopher-frenemies sat around for hours at Café Procope, formulating many of the ideas on rights and state tyranny that would eventually lead to the monarchy’s demise. I mean, if those guys (and yeah, they were pretty much all guys, though I like to imagine the pamphleteer and playwright Olympe de Gouges dropping by) were able to supercharge their new ideas through the stuff, how can I imagine a life of writing without it?

Oh, and even though I don’t smoke (and never have), I also blame Jim Jarmusch’s film “Coffee and Cigarettes” for my perception that all traces of wit and inspiration will leave me the minute I switch to decaf. I’ll never be as cool as Tom Waits and Iggy Pop, but now I don’t even stand a chance…

I guess only time will tell whether retraining my neurons to function on less caffeine will blunt my would-be writerly prowess— or somehow let me slow down enough to make poetic connections I wouldn’t have otherwise made. This meandering post seems to suggest that abstaining isn’t exactly leading to clearer thinking, in any case.

Let’s just move on.

Since we’re already (vaguely) on the topic of revolutionary France, a social media post from the journal Nature caught my eye this morning. A team of linguists have used data from various sources to create “heat maps” showing how the spread of fear-fuelled gossip in the summer of 1789 took over most of France.

As the authors explain in their full article,

The Great Fear of 1789, a wave of panic and unrest in rural France fuelled by the spreading of rumours, was an important moment at the onset of the French Revolution, marking the collapse of feudalism and the rise of the new regime¹. The Great Fear provides a vivid example of the role the spreading of rumours has in driving political changes that might be relevant today^2,3. Here, we collect existing historical records related to the Great Fear and use epidemiology tools and models⁴ to reconstruct the network of its transmission from town to town.

Intriguingly, this research might offer some clues for why popular unrest reached a tipping point during that year in particular, and not another. It was in 1789 that rumors of an aristocratic plot to starve or burn out the population reached a fever pitch, mobilizing both peasants in the countryside and urban residents to rise en masse against feudal power.

I find it fascinating that the authors used epidemiological models to map the spread of gossip throughout the country (ha, this is all bringing up memories of 2020, right?):

“According to our analysis, spread of the Great Fear followed very closely the patterns of an infectious disease with a basic reproduction number of R₀ = 1.5, a peak in the infection on 30 July and a rapid decrease afterwards. We were also able to quantify the velocity of the contagion by finding the most probable path of spread…”

I think many historians might take issue with some of the methods used by the authors here, since human social and political history can’t be quantified and tracked in the same way as a cholera or coronavirus epidemic is. But I’m also not totally averse to the use of data in new and interesting ways— and even if this sort of method only offers us limited insight into key moments in human history, it might expand our understanding of how human gossip-sharing can lead to profound social transformation. Plus, who says the sciences and humanities should be so cordoned off from each other, anyway? Voltaire and Condorcet certainly would never have approved of that approach…

Moving along, an article from The New York Times has further eroded my sleep with its nightmarish scenario of a Parisian summer in which temperatures reach 50 degrees Celsius, or approx. 122 degrees F. That potential future, as Catherine Porter notes (gift link) may not be far off— and city officials are agonizing over the fact that no one is prepared for this scenario.

“Imagine Paris at 122 degrees Fahrenheit, or 50 Celsius.

The asphalt streets would melt in spots, making it virtually impossible for ambulances and buses to pass. The lights and fans could cut out in neighborhoods if underground cables burned or junction boxes shifted. Cellphone service might go down as antennas on boiling rooftops stopped working. Trains would halt as outdoor rails swelled, keeping nurses, firefighters and electricity engineers from reaching their jobs when they were most needed.

Those are situations city officials are already planning for.”

Not only did this article scare the bejeezus out of me, but it also left me feeling weirdly mournful. I get the strong sense that the European summer as we knew it is disappearing, with temperatures both indoor and out becoming so regularly unbearable and dangerous that it might end up dramatically changing how people live— not to mention travel.

The NYT article notes that temperature rises fuelled by climate change are making Europe heat up at more than twice the global average. And as someone bitterly quipped elsewhere on Substack (I paraphrase): “the disappearance of the gulf stream is giving us the East Coast’s unbearably sticky and humid heat here in Europe”.

Summer is changing its meaning, at a rate much faster than I ever expected to see in my lifetime. And in Paris, nobody’s ready for the catastrophic consequences of that future on human health, jobs and the city’s very identity— even as it bravely pursues an ambitious plan to climate-proof the capital.

Ok, on to something less hope-crushing! La rentrée (back to school and work) is upon us, and my full guide to October 2025 offers updated advice on what to see and do in Paris’ tenth month.

While I’m still sad that the all-night arts event “Nuit Blanche” is no longer being held in October, there’s the Art Basel Paris show at the Grand Palais to look forward to. As I note in the full guide, more than 200 galleries from 40 countries and territories will be showcasing everything from painting to sculpture and installation, photography, video and digital art.

And in conjunction with Art Basel, there’s a free programme of exhibitions and installations, open to all, that will roll out at various locations around the city. Kind of a Nuit Blanche vibe, really.

Read the article

To conclude today’s rambling missive, here’s a quick round-up of France-related stories I’ve been reading on Substack in the past couple of weeks, and found inspiring, insightful and/or funny:

• Over at Emily in France, Emily Monaco suggests some delightful ways and places to taste some of the products of late summer bounty in Paris, from beefheart tomatoes to mirabelle plums and figs. All things I can’t get enough of when it’s warmer out.

• French “fat-shaming” is the cringeworthy-yet-amusing topic of one of Sacha Cohen’s latest posts at A Good Vintage, and can I ever relate. Even when I was at my lowest weight, well below a BMI considered overweight, one doctor in France unceremoniously announced that I was “chubby”. How I managed to maintain a positive relationship to food (and a decent self-image) remains a mystery…

• At If Not, Paris, Samuel Lopez-Barrantes has a deep-dive into the history of the Lutetia Hotel, forever occupied by the ghosts of Nazi occupation and the forced deportation of French Jews. This is a terrific and essential piece that I can’t recommend enough.

Well, that’s a wrap for this issue, les ami/es. Thanks for being here, as always.

If you’re able to, please consider becoming a “Donor” subscriber or “Star Supporter” (you’ll currently get 20% off for annual plans, making an ideal gift!) For less than a cost of a couple of barista coffee drinks every month, you’ll get access to our ample archive of Paris and France-related features, opinion pieces, film & TV reviews, travel tips & in-depth itineraries— plus a free consultation with yours truly by email, to help you plan any future trips and offer personalized suggestions for your stay.

I dare say that’s much better value than two (or fewer!) gingerbread-vanilla-spice-litchi-lattes. Or whatever caffeinated beverages you’d normally order in a typical month. Just remember, it’s great stuff, but may be f*&king with your sleep and turning you into a capitalist tool. Or not. At the end of the day, I won’t bash it.

Support this newsletter

If you enjoy what you read here but would prefer to make a one-off contribution, you can always buy us a decaf or tea (via Ko-fi). Whatever you can give is immensely appreciated, and will allow me to continue producing in-depth features, reviews, interviews, audio & video stories on French history, culture, art, food, news and more.

My ultimate goal is to make this information and insight accessible to everyone, supporting the ideal of the open web— as I detail in my recent post explaining my decision to make all new posts at this newsletter free for six weeks.

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In any case, I can’t thank you enough for being part of this little community of readers. You make this sometimes-lonely endeavor more than worthwhile. And please make sure to comment below if you’re hoping to see something in particular covered here, or at Paris Unlocked. You can also write to me here: editor@parisunlocked.com.

Until next time, I’m blearily yours,

— Courtney

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This week brings some potentially exciting news for anyone who hates fly…

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In the summer of 2003, I was an intern reporter at the Associated Press bureau in Paris. I came in expecting a “slow news” vibe— after all, little typically happens during the summer months in the capital, with politicians off work and news coverage typically focused on sports and “lifestyle” stories. But two major events changed all that: a deadly heatwave that killed thousands of people across France, & the “accidental” death of beloved French actor Marie Trintignant after her boyfriend, the rock star Bertrand Cantat, violently assaulted her in a hotel room.

My summer as a fledgling reporter was deeply marked by these two disturbing events, and while I went on to write several stories about the heat wave and its impact on the city, I toiled over several drafts of a “view from France”-type piece on the murder of Trintignant— a case the French press was almost resoundingly calling a “crime of passion”.

I never finished or published that story, something I’ve long attributed to my then-limited skills as a journalist and cultural commentator. I was only 23 at the time, and this was my first real gig as a journalist. It was easy to chalk it all up to being green.

But after watching a recent Netflix documentary series on the case, I’ve come to view my failure to finish that draft in a different light. From the beginning, I instinctively rejected the premise that Trintignant’s brutal murder was a “crime of passion”, but writing at a time when the term “femicide” wasn’t yet in usage— and the cultural habit of dismissing domestic violence was even more deeply entrenched than it is today—I think it felt impossible to buck the reigning narrative and make a good case to my Editors for a different one.

I also seem to remember (it’s all coming back!) suggesting that the case wasn’t being taken seriously enough as a prominent case of domestic or intimate violence, and getting a tepid response. Was this really news, or little more than fodder for the entertainment section: a piece that wouldn’t likely get much traction with English-speaking readers, who would be unfamiliar with the French celebrities involved?

I believe the Editors likely thought it was the latter. I scrapped my story, sensing their lack of enthusiasm and support.

Over two decades later, the Netflix mini-series seems like a crucial corrective to the heinous idea that a famous woman “died from love”, and that her murderer Bertrand Cantat was deserving of pity and understanding for the threats his crime posed to his career. As lead singer of the much-hallowed indie rock band Noir Désir, wasn’t this unfortunate “crime of passion” something that he would have to now suffer from for the rest of his life? And hadn’t Marie Trintignant been a “difficult” woman who enjoyed a good row, who was known for “provoking” the anger of those around her? Surely Cantat wasn’t a constitutionally violent person capable of doing this again— he was just deeply in love, and things had “gotten out of hand” after a passionate argument between the couple turned physical.

These were the sorts of ideas that dominated French headlines at the time— both in august national newspapers like Le Monde and Libération and in celebrity tabloids.

Read more

This week, a heavy cold has laid me up a bit, and I need to pack for an imminent trip— so I apologize if this post is a bit less narrative and personal than it normally would be. My chest and head are currently steeped in thick viral fog, and I need to eke out some serious time to pack *intelligently* for a weeklong trip with a three-year-old (an endeavor I’ll inevitably fail at). So for this week’s post, I figured that the best use of my remaining brain cells might be to direct you to stories & writings that are inspiring me or getting me to think differently this week. Here goes.

First, I was so sorry to hear of the too-early loss of Émilie Dequenne, a Belgium-born actor who’d illuminated the big screen in films such as “Rosetta” by the Dardenne brothers (Jean-Pierre and Luc). Dequenne passed away on March 16th after battling a rare form of cancer called adrenocortical carcinoma. She was only 43, and left behind a daughter, Milla, and husband, the actor Michel Ferracci.

In 1999 and at only 16, Dequenne won the Best Actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival for her role as the titular character in Rosetta. The film follows tells the story of a teen who lives in a trailer park with her mother, herself battling alcoholism.

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Dear Subscribers,

Embassies and consulates aren’t exactly exciting places— nor especially riveting topics of discussion. They’re places we just expect to be there when we travel, or live abroad: reliable, reassuring anchors to our home country, and places we immediately head for assistance in case of a lost or stolen passport, a visa application or any number of personal emergencies.

But according to Reuters and other reports, the US State Department, under the direction of Elon Musk and his much-protested Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are aiming to shutter some 12 consulates around the world, mostly in Western Europe.

Four out of five of France’s American consulates (not including the American Embassy in Paris) are reportedly on the chopping block: diplomatic missions in Strasbourg, Lyon, Bordeaux and Rennes. That would leave only the consulate in Marseille, should the plans be carried out as envisioned.

What’s the Potential Impact?

For anyone who’s been to France and ventured well outside the Paris region, it isn’t hard to imagine the potential negative impact these closures might have on visitors.

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Dear Subscribers,

In December 2024, officers from the US Army Central unit gathered with French military officials in Saint-Avold, France to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the town’s liberation in 1944.

St-Avold, in France’s northeast, is home to the Lorraine American Cemetery, where over 10,000 US service members were laid to rest— making it the largest U.S. military cemetery in Europe. The ceremony commemorated the lives and sacrifices of US allied troops in World War II, and the campaign that liberated the town from Nazi occupying forces in November 1944.

Here are a few important (and moving) excerpts from the page at the official website:

“Eighty years after the battles here, let us honor the memory of the fallen by living up to their ideals,” said Col. William Bimson, the ARCENT command surgeon. “We are not merely commemorating a past event; we are reaffirming our friendship and our commitment to the ideals that inspired the resistance and liberation of Saint-Avold.”

The anniversary served not only as a moment of reflection but also as a platform to strengthen transatlantic bonds.

“This anniversary invites us to celebrate peace once again, and not to forget the sacrifices of so many young people who came to fight for our freedom,” said Mayor Rene Steiner of Saint- Avold.

The partnership between the U.S. and France, cemented in the sacrifices of World War II, remains a cornerstone of shared values and mutual commitment. The 80th anniversary in Saint- Avold was a poignant reminder of the costs of freedom and the enduring importance of honoring history. (emphasis mine)

This milestone anniversary underscores not just a moment in history but a living bond between nations. As the flags of France and the United States flew side by side, the spirit of camaraderie that liberated Saint-Avold 80 years ago remained ever present.

Is it just me— or does the spirit and tenor of all this feel like distant history? And is it so hyperbolic of me to feel tears welling up as I read it? I’m not one who’s historically been uncritically sentimental about military interventions, to say the least. Nor do I believe that the US has, until recently, been “the good guy” or the “guarantor of worldwide democracy”. How did all those lie-fuelled incursions led by the neocons work out, after all? Etc., etc. …

But there’s a real cognitive dissonance taking hold in my brain and heart, as I read the details of the celebration in Saint-Avold— one that took place, let’s not forget, just over two months ago. On the one hand, there’s my own (no doubt naive) expectation that these alliances, friendships and shared values between France, Europe writ large and the US would somehow be unbreakable.

And on the other hand, there are the events of the past six weeks. There’s my shock, anger and sadness at how the current US President, Vice President and others behind these events have seemingly set on fire— then unceremoniously trashed— over 80 years of postwar consensus, and what were thought to be rock-solid alliances, between Europe and the US. A consensus on how to maintain peace, stability and (at least halfway functional) democracies.

All that seems to be seriously threatened (the optimistic scenario) or already going up in smoke (the pessimistic).

And I can’t lie. I’m reeling. I can’t concentrate, or hold a thought for more than a few fish-slippery seconds. One might call this “status quo or normalcy bias”, as the brilliant Carole Cadwalladr has called the strange, bewildering cognitive state many of us now find ourselves lost in. As she notes in the piece:

“We are trapped in what epidemiologist Adam Kucharski correctly identifies as “status quo or normalcy bias”. There is an inability to process, accept and confront the dangerous new reality we are in and to focus on the big picture and the pivot of history that’s occurred in the last two weeks”

And it feels supremely difficult to simply resume my usual beat of, say, probing the history of the French baguette (a fun one I’m slowly working on, and will get to you soon— promise!) or offering the usual advice on what’s going on in Paris.

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Late last year, French Minister of Culture Rachida Dati announced a controversial new policy that would be rolled out over the next couple of years: one that would see non European-Union citizens charged higher entrance fees to popular attractions in France, including museums such as the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay. I found the announcement dismaying, not least because such a policy would make these treasured cultural institutions less accessible for visitors with modest or low incomes.

Now it looks as if the Louvre, which is desperately in need of renovations in part due to the strains of over-tourism, will serve as a pilot for the new fees policy.

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As usual, I’m late to the table with this, but wishing everyone a happy, contemplative and inspiring New Year. I hope the winter holiday period afforded you some opportunity (however small) to rest and re-assess, especially as we enter what’s shaping up to be another year of profound and (at least for me) deeply unsettling global developments.

I’d love to be able to report that my year is kicking off on a note of high energy and optimism, but I find myself (like so many others) rattled by big fires seemingly erupting everywhere, or nearly— and whether literal or not.

Chief among the chaotic events that have thrown me off balance are the fires that have already destroyed swathes of Los Angeles: my birth city, and still home to many friends and family members I care deeply for. Since the county first came under what’s seemed like a (depersonalized) assault from the natural world, fueled by hurricane-force winds, brush-turned-easy-tinder from a lack of rain, and record winter heat, I’ve been waking up every morning to newsfeeds that make my gut slosh with dread and sadness.

Whole urban and suburban communities: suddenly gone, as if firebombed, leaving behind what could easily be mistaken for war-torn ruins in several historic stretches of LA County. For perhaps the first time, “legacy” media outlets like The New York Times are regularly citing climate change as a major factor in the catastrophe, no longer pretending any of this is up for scientific or ideological debate. At least, then, I no longer feel gaslit by news outlets, as I mourn the prospect of a Southern California made increasingly uninhabitable by a heating world.

As I write this, the fierce Santa Ana winds are dangerously picking up again, and the largest blaze, in Pacific Palisades, is only 11% contained. I have one close friend whose family home is in the Palisades, and since I haven’t heard from her, I have no idea whether they’ve been affected, nor whether they’re all ok. That ongoing silence burns, too.

There’s a particular kind of cognitive dissonance in watching (from afar) a disaster unfold in a place you hold deep personal connections with. There’s a mixture of guilt and relief at not being there to witness what friends and communities are going through; a sense of slight skepticism (are the news reports exaggerating? the calm reactions of certain friends and family seem to suggest so), and of course, helplessness at not being able to do much, besides perhaps donating to various crisis funds.

I don't really know where I’m going with all this. I just needed a place that might momentarily hold my grief and disbelief at what’s transpiring. Thanks for allowing that, however off-topic my ramblings may seem.

None of it is really that nonsequitor for me, anyway. I write about Paris (and France writ large) because I carved out a new home and identity there in my early 20s, while Los Angeles was my original home, and continues to figure in that identity. Both cities loom large in my subconscious and conscious mind, occupying my dreaming and waking life on a regular basis. So they’re intimately connected places for me, both as a person and a writer.

But to get to one of the things promised in the heading of this issue, the fires have made me significantly more curious about what I know to be a large and vibrant French community in Los Angeles— one that, according to this piece, was instrumental in building the city during the 19th century.

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This week, I briefly survey three books I’ve either got on my shelf (collecting a bit of sad dust) or am planning to procure— and that I’m looking forward to read whenever I can.

My hope is that they’ll inspire you to potentially go pick one or two up so we can compare thoughts down the line. Who knows— they may even help a bit with the wearying mental labor of assembling your seasonal giftlist!

Paris Isn’t Dead Yet: Surviving Gentrification in the City of Light

Cole Stangler (published by The New Press in 2023)

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For anyone who’s already visited the Parisian Catacombs, you’ll know it’s an experience that’s not easily shaken off, even if you’re not claustrophobic or averse to contemplating your own mortality. Traversing a narrow, mile-long corridor lined with the remains of some six million people— femurs, skulls and all, almost artfully arranged in tightly formed heaps— you’re witnessing the incredible feat of public management that saw the creation of the catacombs in the 18th century, when several overcrowded cemeteries were exhumed.

Such was the weight of the corpses that filled the Cimetière des Innocents, near Les Halles in Paris city center, that there are (credible) reports of patrons in cellar bars witnessing walls caving in and human remains falling in alongside the rubble. The stench was also reportedly unbearable in certain areas, and there were also credible concerns about contamination to local water supply. It was, to put it lightly, a bit of a hygiene crisis for the city.

Luckily, the capital’s many layers of limestone bedrock, already significantly hollowed to supply local industrial quarries and build up the city, provided ample underground space for the remains of millions of defunct denizens. And so the Catacombs were gradually constructed, re-organized in the early 19th century after the bones were more or less unceremoniously dumped below-ground in the late 18th century.

Now, for the first time, scientists are working to analyze some of the bones in hopes of learning more about the lives and health of the people whose identities had largely been effaced when their remains were transferred to les Catacombes— or even earlier, when they were dumped into fossés communes (mass graves).

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I recently saw “Lee”, starring Kate Winslet as the lauded WWII photojournalist, former model and surrealist “muse” Lee Miller. It was a solid, if at times aesthetically and narratively un-ambitious, biopic that I generally enjoyed. But while I’m glad the film from debut director Ellen Kuras, which also stars Marion Cotillard and a surprisingly moving Andy Samberg, brought Miller back into the spotlight, it couldn’t possibly capture her complex legacy in a runtime of just under two hours.

So rather than cranking out a traditional film review (something I’ll leave to the critics this time), I thought I’d offer a few brief notes on what you won’t really learn about the American-born photographer by seeing the movie. One I do recommend reserving for the big screen, if you can.

She was an important surrealist photographer herself— not just a muse and model.

One of my early Paris apartments circa 2002 or 2003 was decorated with a few prints of Lee Miller portraits, taken by the American-born surrealist photographer Man Ray. I think I (or perhaps my former partner) found them in a bargain bin at a prints shop, or something akin.

I always wrongly presumed (as so many others have) that before Miller became a celebrated photojournalist at the onset of World War II in 1939— notably exposing some of the Nazi’s atrocities by visiting Dachau and Buchenwald shortly after their liberation— she was primarily a model and muse to surrealist photographers and artists including Man Ray and Jean Cocteau. This is the narrative that’s been propagated for decades, at least in mainstream channels.

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Dear Subscribers,

My apologies that things have been a little quiet on this front. It’s been an intense month, with family-related matters requiring my time over the past few weeks. I appreciate your patience with the ebbs and flows in energy/output that inevitably mark an endeavor manned (or, rather, womaned!) by a single person.

This week, there are several stories from France that have caught my attention, however fleetingly. (Side rant: I had vowed to trade in my smartphone for a dumbphone, at least for basic daily use at home. But I realized quickly that since none currently on the market enable WhatsApp— a tool I use to stay in touch with something like 90% of friends and family, including overseas— this was a no-go. So my attention-and-infinite-distraction issues continue, as they do for most of us.)

On with it, already. The story I’m probably the most excited about is this month’s re-opening of the medieval fortress of Carcassonne (in the southwestern French city over which it dominates).

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Dear Subscribers,

Today’s post will be a bit shorter than usual— I’m scrambling a bit to cross my T’s, dot my I’s and pack before heading off on a much-needed summer break to the Pink Granite Coast in Brittany. You can bet that I’ll bring back some intel from the region on my return, though, whether it’s on crepes, salted butter and local ciders, guidance on where to walk in a region reputed to gush with wild natural beauty, or reports on whether I managed to see/befriend any puffins (something that’s near the top of our wish list).

Before I sign off for most of July, I wanted to leave you with a few stories that have captured my (flagging summer) attention this week.

First, the Olympic torch is making its way through Paris today after it arrived in time for the Fête de la Bastille over the weekend. One of its bearers is a 94-year old former French weightlifting champion named Léon Lewkowicz. He also happens to be a Holocaust survivor.

Today, he is commemorating the thousands of women, men and children who were rounded up between July 16th and 17th, 1942 in a Parisian sports arena— with the majority sent to transit camps outside the city before being deported eastward by train to Nazi death camps.

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Dear Subscribers,

Per my tardy tradition, I’m offering you a look at highlights from this year’s Cannes Film Festival— over a month after the prizes were announced, the red carpet was rolled back up and the fashion magazines concluded their lofty musings on who-wore-what. For some reason— perhaps the early onset of what Lana del Rey would call a certain “summertime sadness”, I just never seem to have the bandwidth to cover the glamour and hoopla while it’s actually happening. And this seems appropriate, given that I’ve never snagged the prize press pass which would allow me to attend in person. Peut-être bien un jour… (maybe someday)…but then again, maybe hot takes just aren’t my thing.

Caveats aside, there’s a nice, quiet lag between the closing of the festival and the wider release of the films that triumphed (or, in many cases, were unfairly overlooked) at Cannes— and so I never feel that bad about taking my time to process the event and get you a modest update later in the summer. This still leaves time for you to think about what to see when the films actually get a wider release, whether through big screens or streaming.

So let’s get to it, already!

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Dear Subscribers,

In the seemingly endless run-up to the Summer Olympics in Paris, newsfeeds are overcrowded with stories about the Games: ones that reveal both the excitement and the chaos generated by their imminent start date. One such story has stuck with me this week, despite initially seeming to be a trivial bit pushed out by editors on a slow news day.

According to local newspaper Le Parisien, the Opening Ceremony scheduled to take place on the evening of July 26th poses a security risk that hasn't been properly addressed until now. The worry is that apartment balconies might collapse under the weight of too many spectators hoping to get a glimpse of the show unfolding below on the Seine river.

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Dear Subscribers,

I’ve spent a bit of time this week catching up on news from the Gallic world after being absorbed in my own little world of projects and concerns. Now that I’ve gotten up to speed a bit, I thought I’d offer a little recap/preview of the stories and forthcoming events that have managed to hold my attention for more than a few seconds.

First, I’m admittedly a bit late to the game here, but in late April a humble bakery in Paris’ 11th arrondissement, Utopie, came out on top in the annual competition for the city’s best baguette.

Xavier Netry, a baker who’s been perfecting his trade for some 25 years, is credited with the win for Utopie. The boulangerie on Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud (just a few blocks from my last apartment in Paris!) prevailed over 172 other shortlisted candidates to snag the top prize.

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Dear Subscribers,

Late last week, I had a tough job to attend to. It involved sitting in my darkened living room and watching a luminous Juliette Binoche chop leeks, add various herbs to a bouillon, spoon a painstakingly-made sauce onto a seafood vol au vent with vegetables, and smile her famed half-smile, as clouds of steam drifted up from the heavy copper pans to partly obscure her face. Sounds of sizzling scallops, of gently simmering stock, and even of hands macerating herbs with a mortar and pestle filled the room, and I nearly forgot where I was.

These were among the pure sensory experiences offered in the astounding, half-hour-long first sequence in “The Taste of Things”, a recent French film that’s committed to the premise that food is love, and vice-versa.

I have to start this review with a caveat: if you’re not interested in food, food history, and/or cooking, I’m not sure you’d find this film to be nearly as captivating as I did. But if you’re intrigued by the idea that making good food is tantamount to a profound act of love and attention, and that, as one character puts it, “it takes culture and memory to form one’s taste”, here’s why I think spending 130 minutes on this film might prove worthwhile.

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Dear Subscribers,

I’m back at it after a few days roaming two fascinating cities in Bulgaria. I’d never been, and without wanting to delve into too many particulars— this is, after all, a Substack about France— what I will say is that it’s a dizzyingly rich place that really deserves more interest from travelers. Both cities we visited, Sofia (the capital) and Plovdiv, are swimming in ancient (and very visible) Roman history. Key early medieval sites also abound, with some of the finest examples of early Christian mosaics and painting I’ve yet seen.

They both also harbor some dramatic traces of the Soviet period: something that has always intrigued me, having grown up when the idea of the “Iron curtain” was still absolute.

The cuisine is marvelously hybrid and flavorful, melding Mediterranean, Slavic and Turkish cooking in ways that really surprised and delighted me. The people were almost invariably friendly and open. And if you’re interested in more recent architecture, Plovdiv’s Old Town harbors some beautifully-preserved houses designed in the “Bulgarian Revival” style of the late 18th and 19th centuries, featuring graceful curvatures and elaborately painted wood.

I’ve digressed embarrassingly, though. Aside from wanting to share my new enthusiasm for a country I previously was completely ignorant of (and thus under-estimated) the reason I bring this all up is that I came across an interesting site of French literary and cultural history while wandering through Old Plovdiv.

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Dear Subscribers,

Apologies for the lag between posts— I’ve been laid a bit low by a stubborn virus of some sort, and the symptoms have lingered for far longer than I’d hoped they would. Nevertheless, I’m back at my desk this week, feeling less than fully energetic but with an unmistakeable itch to get back to working (and writing). It’s a relief.

This week, my wife and I rented a French film that had caught my interest some time ago, not least because I read an IMDB synopsis that hinted at something delightfully Gallic:

"Just when Julie finally gets an interview for a job that will let her raise her children better, she runs into a national transportation strike.”

Starring Laure Calamy, who played in the French Netflix series “Call My Agent” (see my review here), “Full Time” is a pulse-raising film about a single mother who’s struggling to keep her life (and finances) together amid a major transportation strike in Paris. Yes— this is quite possibly the most. French. plot. point. ever.

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