It’s riddled with clichés, super predictable and downright cheesy, but I can’t stop watching the popular romantic comedy. Emily in Paris from Netflix.
De-zo-lay, but not so de-zo-lay, would surely justify the lovely Emily Cooper (Lily Collins), whose atrocious French is even worse, even after four seasons in the 5e arrondissement, than the one mumbled by Lady Gaga at the Paris Olympics. Good day! It’s very good!
In Emily’s mouth, Gabriel becomes Ga-bri-yelle. Antoine changes into Anne-twouane. Sylvie is still Seule-vie. And Giverny is horribly transformed into Gi-veur-ny. Such a beautiful place massacred by the newspeak of a self-centered American woman, obsessed with her iPhone and dressed in the sweet colors of a box of Smarties.
Moreover, in this episode – the second one – filmed in the gardens of the painter Claude Monet, Emily shamelessly asks a museum employee: do you work here? Meurde, to paraphrase Emily, who cowardly abandoned her French as a (more than) second language classes, like a designer dress from last season, which is being sold off at Vestiaire Collective.
Emily in Paris is truly the worst best TV show in the universe. It’s poorly written, but irresistible. It’s poorly acted, but so cute.
The plot is thin, thin as thin as its heroine, but we don’t care at all.
During each half-hour episode, we attend a splendid fashion show in real trendy places in the City of Lights like the Bouillon Chartier or the chic restaurant L’Ambroisie, a three-star Michelin restaurant located on Place des Vosges.
Speaking of stars in gastronomy, the whole section about Marianne, the fake inspector of the Michelin Guide (eye roll), is 100% ridiculous. No scandal here, because it’s been four years since aficionados ofEmily in Paris understood that the depth of intrigue is always limited to the surface.
For example, my favorite character, the elegant boss Sylvie Grateau (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, what a great actress), triggers a #metoo storm, which involves the billionaire boss of a luxury empire copied from LVMH. In any other series, this would have been a major social issue. In Emily in Parisit lasts, at the most, five minutes. And we never talk about it again. And that’s perfectly fine.
Because Emily Cooper navigates in a candy universe of extra-soft comics. Wearing pumps that are not at all suited to the Parisian cobblestones, Emily naively hobbles from her apartment on Place de l’Estrapade, in the heart of the Latin Quarter, to the pretty bistro of her lover Gabriel (Lucas Bravo), where she sips her glass of wine, not at all affected by the fate of the planet.
Why would she worry? The dashing Emily wears beautiful clothes, her Rosemont toupee suits her perfectly and she invents concepts for bourgeois adverts for facial lubricants, I mean, she always hits the jackpot, yes indeed! Emily is a Disney princess who writes her own fairy tale with funny hashtags on Instagram, that’s it.
A princess who can’t jog like the rest of the world or beat eggs vigorously, but that’s too intellectual a debate for an aerial series like this.
WhatEmily in Paris offers its fans, it is a constant visual and auditory stimulation. Pop music pulses at exactly the right moment on a carousel of splendid images of the City of Lights. The Palais Royal, the Café de Flore, the Alexandre-III bridge, the Saint-Ouen flea market, the Roland-Garros stadium, when is the next departure for Charles-de-Gaulle airport?
Moreover, the placement of the Samsung Galaxy Flip thing in the hands of the chic Sylvie is so well done that it (almost) makes you want to switch to the Android camp.
Let’s face it, this first half of the fourth season ofEmily in Pariss doesn’t push the story to dizzying heights. Mindy’s (Ashley Park) musical career stagnates (we’re waiting for Eurovision), banker Alfie (Lucien Laviscount) disappears from the subway map and poor Camille (Camille Razat) loses almost everything, no spoilers, damn it!
The most enjoyable moment? The appearance of Sylvie’s mother, the queen of the night Héloïse, played with panache by the actress Liliane Rovère, 91, alias Arlette in Call my agent. Sabrez the champagne – or the Champère, in this case.
Yes, it’s cheesy, Emily in Paris. It’s superficial, it’s corny, and it’s corny, and I’m counting down the days until the last five episodes of the series come out.
When is it already? Thursday, September 12th. Thank you very much. And have a good trip!
I levitate
With The Furies by Lauren Groff
After A life like any other by Hanya Yanagihara, here is another great American novel about marital bliss, the secrets of marriage and social success. At Vassar University, the charismatic actor Lotto, 22, falls madly in love with the enigmatic Mathilde, a blonde model with a cold beauty. They marry after two weeks and their fusional relationship arouses envy and jealousy. The first part of the book, released a few years ago, is bright and tells Lotto’s version of his relationship, successful and fulfilled, according to him. The second half, much darker, hands the microphone to Mathilde, who reveals several cracks in her otherwise flamboyant union with Lotto. This clash between public marital life and what is really experienced in private is brilliant.
I avoid it
The final of House of the Dragon 2
Excuse me? This is how the second chapter of House of the Dragon – the anteepisode of Game of Thrones – on Crave? It’s rejected. What a boring and failed finale, which leaves us just before the carnage truly begins. No battles were shown, despite the recruitment of three new dragon riders. In short, this second season of House of the Dragon was a long appetizer, which left us as hungry as the inhabitants of King’s Landing.