(Contains some spoilers)
I have very vague memories of the news surrounding the Paris terrorist attacks in November 2015. To be fair, I was only 10 years old and wouldn’t understand the gravity of events like this until the madness that happened the year after, but the idea of terrorism was an alien concept to me at that time. Similarly, this is the approach that Paris Memories takes when presenting its protagonist Mia, played excellently by Virginie Efira. After the restaurant attack in the opening, she spends the rest of the film trying to piece together what happened that night, as the traumatic stress she experienced has repressed her memories.
At its core, Paris Memories is a simple and understated but still very poignant story of recovering emotionally from a terrifying ordeal and connecting with others in your situation. Led by Virginie Efira, the cast of principal characters all bond not over their trauma, but the steps they’re taking in their recovery and their attempts to move on.
There are moments that did grip me. When Mia returns to the restaurant that she was in, another survivor looks at her with anger, condemning her for running into the bathroom and locking herself in when others were pleading to hide with her. We as the audience know just as little as Mia does – the film cuts from Mia hiding under a table during the attack to months after where she is still dealing with PTSD. Therefore, we can’t help but wonder whether this woman is lying or if Mia really did lock out those desperate victims. It’s a simple but really effective exploration of survivor’s guilt. Sadly, we don’t get as much of this as I think we should. Despite starting off strongly, Paris Memories loses focus and became a bit of a slog for me, despite a fairly trim runtime of 100 minutes.
My main problem is that the film is trying to do too much. The heart of the film is recovering from a traumatic incident and re-discovering the beauty of life. That explains the film’s original French title – Revoir Paris, or ‘seeing Paris again’, seeing the beauty in the city where you grew up and forgetting about your worries. This film has many establishing shots of the city, showing it in a beautiful light, but I never got a feeling of community. This is because Paris Memories can never decide whether it’s telling just Mia’s perspective or viewing the events from the memories of multiple people.
Easily the film’s best moments are when the score either fades into the background or is completely absent, and the performances and the dialogue are allowed to do the work.
The various people that Mia meets in an attempt to piece her own memories together also stall the main plot to go on their own strands of their experiences, which wouldn’t be a problem if the film was more of an ensemble piece. Presenting this more as an anthology, with separate ten-minute testimonies of survivors and linking them together, would’ve been a better way of telling these stories. As it stands, they unnecessarily pause the journey that Mia’s on to give insight into people that we don’t care about as much, and the film feels both frustratingly insular and yet too crowded at the same time.
The film also feels the need to add in even more emotional baggage. The night of the attack, Mia is out for dinner with her partner, who has to leave early for an ‘emergency work engagement’ – later on, it’s heavily implied that this is actually him having an affair. Mia also develops feelings for another survivor called Thomas, who was celebrating his birthday in the same restaurant as Mia at the time of the attack. It’s not badly done per se, but I don’t see the point in any of these romantic subplots – recovering from the stress and horror of a terrorist attack is more than enough of an emotional hook.
Without a doubt the biggest concession to melodramatic cliches comes with the score. This is a shame because in the beginning the sound design is top-notch – the mixing during the attack itself is great, the ringing gunshots and the silences between blasts really sell the horror. However, the rest of the film has several moments where pianos and orchestras play in the background while a character is crying, or embracing, or recalling past memories. It’s not in-your-face and overbearingly loud, but the way in which it creeps up during scenes makes it feel really cloying. I don’t need sweeping strings and sombre piano to let me know that recovering from terrorism-related trauma is a terrifying ordeal. I don’t know what you could have done as an alternative to this, but the music as it is can’t help but feel like it’s forcing an emotion on me, rather than letting it come naturally.
Easily the film’s best moments are when the score either fades into the background or is completely absent, and the performances and the dialogue are allowed to do the work. Unfortunately, these become increasingly fewer as the film progresses, as the overstuffed cast of characters and the falling back into melodrama hinders the true impact that Paris Memories was hoping to instil in the viewer.
I’m not normally a fan of straight drama pieces, so maybe someone more acquainted with this style will get more out of this film. Perhaps I was hoping for something I was never going to get, but sadly Paris Memories didn’t quite work for me, as the strong performances have to do most of the heavy lifting with a script that becomes increasingly unfocused.
Paris Memories is out in Select UK cinemas on 4th August courtesy of Picturehouse Entertainment.
