{"id":1401,"date":"2024-05-29T18:36:40","date_gmt":"2024-05-29T18:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/?p=1401"},"modified":"2024-05-29T18:36:40","modified_gmt":"2024-05-29T18:36:40","slug":"emily-in-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/?p=1401","title":{"rendered":"Emily in Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Ah, Emily in Paris!\u00a0\u00a0Emily the innocent (who hit Paris running with her open, smiling American face) and Emily the arrogant (who never seemed to realize why the French wouldn\u2019t want to take lessons in marketing or anything else from a young woman who didn\u2019t speak a word of their language) opened a new page on Paris for Francophiles all over the world. Zillions of books have been written about the French, French culture, Franco-American relations but nothing has encapsulated the American dream of Paris as effectively as the popular TV series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My initial reaction was \u2026horror!  I was exasperated by Emily and her naivet\u00e9 (although I was just like her when I arrived, with my own open, smiling face – minus the fab wardrobe). I was and still am exasperated by the Big Lie of a pristine Paris. Where on earth and when did the crew do their filming? I asked myself. As one who has lived in Paris for 5 decades, I find no similarities between the real Paris I walk around in and those gorgeous misty whitewashed images we see in the series. Sure, there are clean streets in Paris but many, especially in non-touristic neighborhoods, are garbage strewn and dotted with dog poop and pigeon droppings. Added to that is Mayor Hidalgo\u2019s lack of aesthetic sense, resulting in ugly railroad ties for park benches and work sites all over the city. I did some research on filming locations and they were indeed in Paris. All I can say is that a clean-up crew must have been hard at work before the takes. In making that critique you can see that I have become almost French\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, some things in the series offered priceless cultural insights. The French boss, Sylvie, played by the immensely talented actress Pauline Leroy Beaulieu, fits to a T a certain type of Frenchwoman I myself have run across: brittle and disdainful on the surface  (though underneath the tough facade her pity for Emily begins to turn into a kind of grudging admiration) and oh so French.  The way Sylvie holds her cigarette (because of course being French she smokes), the way she efortlessly ties her scarves to perfection and wears the simple but sophisticated clothes on her pencil slim body, the very way she moves and uses her hands stops the young and innocent Emily in her tracks (American expats relate like crazy).  You can\u2019t decide whether to love her, hate her or imitate her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love an early scene in which Emily tells her co-worker Luc how much she loves her job.  \u201cWork makes you happy?\u201d he inquires, incredulously. When she confirms, he shakes his head: \u201cAmericans live to work\u201d, he says, sadly. \u201cThe French work to live.\u201d OK, it may be a huge clich\u00e9 but it\u2019s so true and made me laugh out loud.  In another moment of Franco-American reckoning, Emily enthusiastically presents yet another new marketing idea to her boss. \u201cYou want to open doors \u2013 to everyone\u201d, Sylvie exclaims, with undisguised disgust.  \u201cI want to close them.\u201d  (That also resonated. My French husband swears I don\u2019t know the word \u201cno\u201d and am open to every new idea that comes down the pike.   I, on the other hand, swear that \u201cno\u201d is the only word he knows.)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there\u2019s the matter of love and romance:\u00a0\u00a0Emily is shocked to learn that Sylvie is Antoine\u2019s mistress and that his wife is her best friend. When Luc sees her surprised reaction, he shrugs it off laconically: \u201cThe French are romantic but also Cartesian.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Et voil\u00e0.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0If only for these gems of Franco-American cultural insights, I have revised my judgement of the series.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I still find it basically vacuous but loathe it less.\u00a0\u00a0And – supreme compliment – In some ways it is even \u201cpas mal<\/em>\u201d, as the French would say.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ah, Emily in Paris!\u00a0\u00a0Emily the innocent (who hit Paris running with her open, smiling American face) and Emily the arrogant (who never seemed to realize why the French wouldn\u2019t want to take lessons in marketing or anything else from a young woman who didn\u2019t speak a word of their language) opened a new page on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":783,"featured_media":1403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16,15,8,17],"class_list":["post-1401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cafes","tag-culture","tag-france","tag-romance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/783"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1401"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1405,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401\/revisions\/1405"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}