Paris Can Wait follows a fairly simple premise. Sweet, polite and whimsical Anne (Diane Lane), the wife of a big-shot film executive (Alec Baldwin) accepts a lift from Cannes to Paris with one of her husbands business associates. Her husband Michael is a successful, driven yet indifferent husband. Anne takes off on the journey from Cannes to Paris with Jacques (Arnald Viard) and the story starts to sizzle. What follows is a haze of wine, food and flirtation. Across two days they rattle through the French countryside in a vintage car, sipping vino, picking wild watercress, visiting historical sites and sharing luxurious cheese platters and heartfelt tales.
However, for me, the film isn’t as rich as that. What is meant be a sumptuous feast of not only cheese and wine, but also tender emotions and human connection, feels a little under-seasoned and rushed. The characters seem unformed; apart from being a busy man, has her husband done anything so very wrong? Alec Baldwin’s absent character seemed to be there more as a plot device for this grandeur road trip. Diane Lane plays a perfectly sweet Mary-Sue kind of character, there to be understatedly creative and “let it all happen”. And who exactly is Jacques? Sure, he’s laying on the French charm thick and yeah, the man knows how to eat, but what more does the film say about him? There are scenes littered with signs he could be the bad guy; evasive phone calls and stolen credit cards but none of this is seen to fruition. It’s hard to tell if this was a deliberate plot device or just a sloppy storyline. With characters that don’t gel, it’s especially hard to buy the whole “we fell madly in love over the course of two days” thing.
When it comes to visuals, the film is stunning. So stunning in fact that I’m almost positive the French Tourism office must surely have funded it. Picture mountains of soft decadent cheese, fields of lavender, endless bottles of wine, oozing chocolate desserts, interesting French history lessons interspersed, and so very many beautiful long shots of the gorgeous French countryside. On visuals alone, this film is porn for any foodie or Francophile.
Most of the time Paris Can Wait is a sweet, uplifting take on the classic road trip film. To me, it was the type of movie my mum and I would pick as a filler title “get a 5 for 5 deal” at Blockbuster. Something inoffensive, but also something neither of us had a yearning to see, a half-melted chocolate plucked from the side of our coffee-cup.
