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Film Search
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Lost in Paris
Comedy
The cinematic French clowning tradition of Jacques Tatí gets a pleasantly silly contemporary updating from the husband and wife team of Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon. Gordon plays a Canadian woman named Fiona, who replies to a request from her beloved 88-year-old Aunt Martha (Emmanuelle Riva) in Paris to save her from involuntary relocation to a retirement home. So it’s off to France for Fiona, who promptly loses all her belongings, can’t find the missing Martha and becomes intertwined with a homeless man (played by Abel). The plot is merely a thin structure on which to hang the physical comedy, with the gangly pair showing off some amusingly choreographed bits from getting caught in a Metro gate to balancing precariously on the edge of the Eiffel Tower. The material is thin, a bit less effective when the humor isn’t based on slapstick and perhaps too locked in to using a romance between its two awkward leads as a center point. But when you can get a sequence like Riva and farceur Pierre Richard sharing a seated soft-shoe pas de deux on a cemetery bench, it’s best not to quibble.
Official Site: lostinparis.oscilloscope.net
Director: Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon
Producer: Charles Gillibert
Cast: Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Emmanuelle Riva
Director: Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon
Producer: Charles Gillibert
Cast: Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Emmanuelle Riva
