Ninotchka . In this 1939 comedy, Greta Garbo plays a cold-blooded Soviet agent who travels from her native Russia to Paris to solve a problem involving some jewels that belonged to a duchess exiled in the French city and which she believes belong to the people. What this woman of strong social and political convictions didn’t expect was to fall in love. With a city, a lifestyle, and, above all, a man who makes her laugh. The clash of worlds, two opposing characters, and a mischievous, provocative humor become the main ingredients of a hilarious and charming love story. The city, recreated in a studio, appears elegant, uninhibited, sensual—how could she not fall in love with it?
Funny Face . Fashion, romance, and comedy combine in this musical starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire. The story revolves around a Richard Avedon-inspired fashion photographer who, in the middle of a photo shoot, meets a modest and shy bookseller and decides to turn her into a supermodel, taking her to Paris. Another highlight is the impressive wardrobe, featuring exclusive designs that demonstrate the legendary collaboration between the actress and designer Hubert de Givenchy. The world of fashion, magazines, publishing, and Paris as the backdrop allowed them to unleash their creativity to the fullest. Funny, ironic, intelligent, a parody and homage, it is, above all, a beautiful love story that culminates in the perfect city.
Breathless . The first feature film directed by Jean-Luc Godard and based on a story by François Truffaut, the film follows a sleazy thief played by Jean Paul-Belmondo who tries to evade justice and woo an American journalism student played by Jean Seberg. Like its title, Godard films his protagonist through the streets of Paris at an ever-increasing pace and vertigo while being hunted by the police. Without a pre-written script, improvising as he shot, the director defined a new way of making films and paved the way for modernity. Love, freedom, escape, pain, and Paris as the perfect canvas for one of the most influential directors in history.
Cléo from 5 to 7. A Tuesday afternoon in the life of Cléo, a beautiful young woman who seems to have it all. But this isn’t just another day; she awaits the results of a medical test that frightens her. Between the streets of Paris, tarot readings, bars, and the cinema, she meets a young soldier about to be deployed who confesses his fear of dying. Directed by the great Agnès Varda and a classic of the so-called Nouvelle Vague, a movement she never fully felt part of, the film, between fiction and documentary images, portrays in almost real time an introspective Parisian life, far from the romanticization often attributed to it. Moving and profound, a reflection on time, beauty, love, life, and death.
Belle de jour . One of Luis Buñuel’s best-known works, an erotic drama starring Catherine Denueve. A cold young woman, married for a year, punctuates her routine and boring life with erotic dreams and masochistic fantasies. In this frenzy of letting herself be carried away by the things that go through her head, she goes to work as a prostitute in a brothel by day while at night she returns to her good husband and a chaste marriage. Between memories, traumas, reality and fiction, sometimes mixed, and dreams, a complex psychological construction is revealed of a character who needs to catalyze what she carries hidden inside. In Buñuel’s Paris, you can be one person by day and another by night because the city invites mystery and liberation.