Review by Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Jethro Massey
Starring: Marie Benati, Jérémie Galiana, Fanny Cottençon, Gilles Graveleau, Laurence Vaissiere
To the person in a relationship, it is the most important thing in the world, but to other people, to everyone else, your relationship is deeply mundane; like other people's dreams or problems. The only time a romance has potential for intrigue is the nascent stage (with vicarious will-they-won't-they disequilibriums appealing to our inherent sense of narrative) or when it is in the death throes (schadenfreude). Other than that, couples are completely dull: the creepy way that over time they blend into each other, their awkward pass/agg communications. And the most egregious sort of couples are the ones who advertise their sex life, arrogantly assuming you'll be both scandalised and impressed with whatever so-so kink they're into (which, and this can't just be me, always turns out to be something humiliatingly quotidian), as if they're the only people in the world to ever have had it off. God, they're tiresome. Enter Paul and Paulette (those names), are-they-aren't-they protagonists of Jethro Massey's Paul & Paulette take a bath (that lowercase), who meet-cute at the Place de la Révolution where young woman Paulette (Marie Benati, a Gallic Charlotte Ritchie) is kneeling in supplication at the site of Marie Antoinette's decapitation. Paulette catches American photographer Paul's eye (Jérémie Galiana, who, in keeping with the British Sit-Com actor synonymy, looks like a polished James Buckley), and the two bond over the beheading of the last queen of France, performing an ersatz re-enactment in the Tuileries Gardens wherein Paul cuts off Paulette's long, lustrously sable hair at the neck. In Paul & Paulette take a bath's ensuing "quirky" narrative, which focuses on the pair seeking out the sites of murders/atrocities with a view to bloodlessly reliving them, this is the only moment which proves to be vaguely emotive.
The above scenario typifies Paul & Paulette take a bath and establishes the film's twee tone and would-be bijou characters. If the prospect of following these goons as they commence to mope around European cities being grimdark appeals, then fill your bottes. The performances are good, as is the poppy photography of Ole Marius Dahl and Isarr Eiriksson. Yet despite its ostensibly tasteful sheen, the ideologies and developing plot of Paul & Paulette take a bath leave a very sour note. Spoilers follow for this emo Before Sunrise...
Paul is dissatisfied because his photography career isn't taking off, and so he must instead work in a letting agency where his attractive older boss occasionally has sex with him: it is a hard life, apparently (with its slick chrome and glass offices, the lettings office is like no real estate agency I've ever seen). Paulette is presumably at odds because her female lover has left her... (although, as the film develops we do become privy to a deeper malady). From the off it is difficult to identify with this pair of try-hards, impossible to sympathise with their ennui. You're young and attractive, you have money, and you live in Paris? How bad can things really be? Seeking out sensation, they locate "dark tourism" spots of interest. Visiting the site of a mass summary execution, Paulette enquires if Paul would rather "shoot someone or be shot?" Later she dons a Marilyn Monroe wig and encourages Paul to strangle her in the manner of someone who was murdered in similar circumstances. They "immerse themselves in the horrors of humanity." What a pair of edge lords.
It continues. Most appallingly during a road trip where they stop and moon over a roadside tribute to someone who didn't even die under famous or spectacular circumstances. And it's not like there is a Todd Solondz nihilism or even John Waters high camp at play here. Paul & Paulette take a bath seems completely earnest and smugly convinced of its apparently risqué premise. To give a measure, showcased as someone allegedly esoteric and deep, Paulette's pop-icon heroes are the aforementioned Monroe and also Elvis Presley: far from being idiosyncratic, she seems to have the same cultural literacy as whoever does those glossy spray paint portraits you see on the side of the dodgems in fairgrounds. The outwardly abject hobbies of the pair are presented in a similarly glib fashion: the title refers to the couple bathing in a flat once apparently occupied by the leader of the Third Reich, and the two pretend to be Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun as they wash each other's hair... I'm reminded of Orson Welles on meeting Hitler: the so-called Führer had "no personality whatsoever," the great man said, adding that, "he made so little an impression on me that I can't remember a second of it." However, within Paul & Paulette take a bath there is no exploration of the banality of evil, instead there is just banality.
It's hard to say what precise tone the film aims for with the above sequence, but it seems as if it is positioned, with irresponsible mediocrity, as unconventionally romantic. There isn't a commentary here, or even a sense of bad taste extremity. It is not as if it all goes Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, which, objectionable as it is, at least has an upfront honesty about its exploitation. In Paul & Paulette take a bath we are positioned to see the characters as charming off-the-wall naïfs, and not the deeply unpleasant, narcissistic and disrespectful simpletons that they are. It is bizarre what this film presents as transgressive. Towards the end, in a sequence which mirrors the hair cut of the opening, Paul shaves his pubes off and makes a right balls-up of it as he has seemingly never done it before. The scene is filmed with all the taught pressure of the CIA vault scene in Mission: Impossible with Paul trembling as he holds the safety razor, tentative in a way which would suggest he is about to circumcise himself, and not perform an everyday ablution, albeit one presented here as fringe sexual prep. This is a film where amongst scenes of nazi role play, a character giving themselves a manscape is exhibited as crossing the Rubicon.
Paul & Paulette take a bath does veer into more interesting territory when we meet Paulette's parents, who are bourgeois bigots. It turns out that Paulette's gf broke up with her because she wouldn't take her home to meet the folks, but, as we discover, Paulette poignantly couldn't. Furthermore, it is implied that Paulette manipulated Paul to somewhat appease her parents, who would prefer her to be exclusively heterosexual (and fixes it so her mother walks in on them having sex). The messiness of this situation is a potentially intriguing dynamic which the film, however, does not fully explore, in such a rush as it is to get to its inexcusably inappropriate climax... When the penny drops that in order to impress Paulette back into bed, Paul has rented the apartment of the Bataclan shooter you will be aghast at the tone-deafness. When Paul (pubeless) ultimately breaks down in tears in horrified recognition of the events of November 15th 2015, you will be further appalled. Because in its final scenes, Paul & Paulette take a bath outdoes itself by appropriating a real-life atrocity for fictional catharsis, and, moreover, competitively juxtaposes it with the previously observed incidents of violent outrage, drawing a disgracefully subjective moral equivalence. Why is it this particular tragedy that brings Paul and Paulette to tears, not the other murders, deaths, killings, holocausts? Is it perhaps because of its contemporaneous aspect? Is it to sensationalise? The film is not intelligent or mature enough to process the magnitude of its implications. Paul & Paulette take a bath begins as silly, carries on as unconvincing, and ends up unconscionable.
Paul & Paulette Take a Bath is in UK/ROI cinemas from September 5th.
