Agathe Rousselle in Portrait of Paris Struggle

Movie administrators, just like the characters they depict on display screen, can generally be taught from their errors.

That is definitely the case with French DP turned filmmaker Laurent Slama, whose new characteristic A Second Life vastly improves on his Netflix debut Paris Is Us, which he made beneath the pseudonym Elisabeth Vogler. Each films showcase comparable kinds and premises, following a younger girl round Paris and using tons of actual folks and places, clearly with out full authorization from town.

However whereas Slama’s first movie felt overindulgent and finally aimless, this one is held down by a compelling efficiency from Titane’s Agathe Rousselle, enjoying a Franco-American with a significant angle who’s desperately attempting to make ends meet because the 2024 Summer time Olympics start. Quick and poignant, with a terrific supporting flip from Alex Lawther (Andor), A Second Life manages to keep away from a lot of the clichés of your touristy Paris-set drama, all whereas utilizing the Metropolis of Lights to its fullest.

Shot and edited by Slama in a dense labyrinth crammed with sightseers, followers, partygoers and a large police drive, the movie makes the summer season video games — or “fucking video games,” as heroine Elisabeth (Rousselle) calls them — each a backdrop and a key participant within the story. Working in a concierge service renting out luxurious residences to demanding purchasers, Elisabeth navigates an city gauntlet throughout two action-packed days, hoping to garner good buyer scores and land each a gradual job and a piece visa.

Since she’s clearly French, it’s a bit complicated why Elisabeth largely speaks English and strives to get legalized, however Slama finally solutions these questions: Born overseas to Franco-German mother and father and raised for a time within the U.S., she’s a stranger in an odd land who’s attempting arduous to make Paris her residence. She’s additionally inflicted with an auditory ailment that requires her to put on listening to aids — a truth that enables Slama to maintain messing with the sound design, enhancing the general sense of disorientation.

Hostile and unwelcoming, Elisabeth truly comes off like a typical Parisian, ill-suited to the duty of accompanying obnoxious wealthy folks into their overpriced leases. The movie’s early sections observe her from one flat to a different, with the digital camera speeding alongside her as she races round city. These moments recall one other Paris-set drama: Benoit Jacquot’s A Single Woman, which adopted Virginie Ledoyen in actual time as a luxurious lodge chambermaid with an enormous private dilemma.

Elisabeth has some massive points as nicely, affected by a nasty breakup and considering suicide within the opening scene. She’s in no temper for small speak or perhaps a imprecise smile, which is why her run-in with an uncommon consumer, the chatty, flighty and intensely chill Elijah (Lawther), appears to be like like it’s going to finish in one more catastrophe. However because the latter decides to stay with Elisabeth all through the remainder of the day, after which some, A Second Life winds up reworking into one thing surprising: not a romance, per se, however a chronicle of a budding friendship between two younger folks in want of real human affection.

One more film involves thoughts right here: Julie Delpy’s Two Days in Paris, which additionally adopted a French-American couple in a metropolis jam-packed for its annual Fête de la musique. The distinction right here is how a lot Slama’s movie appears to be off-the-cuff and improvised, as if the actors have been largely enjoying themselves, whereas these round them are solely vaguely conscious a film is being made (we do see bystanders sometimes take a look at the digital camera).

This DIY method befits a narrative about two wayward millennials who wish to dwell freely however are every pinned down by psychological well being struggles, whether or not it’s Elisabeth’s despair or Elijah’s panic assaults. Fortunately, the latter can also be a gifted hypnotist — he’s on the town to work with professional athletes — and at one level he lastly manages to crack Elisabeth’s arduous shell, calming her nerves throughout an impromptu remedy session on the Buttes-Chaumont park.

The movie can get a bit treacly throughout such moments, particularly when Slama repeatedly inserts photographs of Monet’s well-known Water Lilies work — or else of the artist’s scenic gardens out in Giverny. If there ever was a clichéd vacationer attraction together with the Louvre and Eiffel Tower, this is able to be it, though the director does handle to provide it larger that means towards the top of the movie, explaining how Monet’s work is finally a masterpiece through which the practically blind painter triumphed over adversity.

In any other case, the director largely sticks to actuality, grounding his film in Rousselle’s robust and touching efficiency. After going past the decision of responsibility in Julia Ducournau’s Titane, her first characteristic, the actress exhibits she will play a personality coping with extra mundane points than say, getting impregnated by a Cadillac. Her Elisabeth feels very very like a younger girl of our time, striving to make it however refusing to compromise herself, particularly after we see her flip down a high-profile job provide from a tech man. Slama neatly retains his digital camera targeted on her from begin to end, revealing how exhausting it may be to settle in a lovely metropolis that retains rejecting you, till it instantly opens its arms.