You'd think Eleanor Coppola - wife of Francis and mother of Sofia - would have picked up a few tips about film-making over the years. Even just listening to Francis on the phone or asking Sofia how she's getting on with work. But, no, clearly not. Mama Coppola has no feel whatsoever for romantic-comedy, no clue about what makes a character interesting or believable, no concept of pace or tension, and apparently no interest in dialogue that is anything but banal. What she puts on the screen doesn't much resemble a movie at all, to be brutally honest. At best, Paris Can Wait comes across like a lavish, but not particularly compelling travelogue, fully funded by the French Tourist Bureau. At worst, it evokes some rather dull American housewife's Youtube vlog of her European vacation. You'd also think any movie starring Diane Lane can't be too bad. But Lane - normally watchable in just about anything - is so stretched by the thinness of the material here that her attempts to inject some degree of fun and tension into scenes quickly becomes tedious. It doesn't help that her character is infuriatingly passive and pliable for a supposedly successful businesswoman and the well-traveled wife of a film producer. She doesn't balk at being hijacked on her drive to Paris, or having her credit card snaffled for expensive meals and hotels, and she's astonishingly slow to question the motives of a man who takes liberties and takes advantage at every turn. All in all, Paris Can Wait is an insult to the menopausal women it is so clearly setting out to exploit. The two points are purely for the French cuisine along the way - all of it fully described and scrupulously photographed, as though each canard and poisson is another character in the film. And they might as well be.
Review of Bonjour Anne
