"Revoir Paris" -- Movie Review

 

On the opening night of Lincoln Center’s French Film Festival, I attended the screening of “Revoir Paris” (AKA, “Paris Memories”), starring César Award winner for Best Actress Virginie Efira. 

Synopsis

When a woman survives a terrorist attack, will she also be able to survive the post-trauma stress?

Story

Unmarried and childless, Mia and Vincent have been living together for quite some time; since both are career-centered – she as a translator, he as a physician – it’s been a full and rewarding life.  One night, when he has to work at the hospital, she goes out to a restaurant near their Paris home.  The relaxing night is interrupted by a terrorist attack – a gunman bursts into the dining room and opens fire on both customers and employees alike.  Almost everyone is shot and many die before the shooter finally leaves.  Although injured, Mia survives, but remains seriously psychologically scarred by the incident in its aftermath. 

In the months after the shooting, Mia still hasn’t returned to work and she’s been growing increasingly distant from Vincent to the point that their relationship is starting to fray.  He notices that she’s not the same person anymore and that she is having considerable difficulty turning the page, quite possibly due to survivor’s guilt.  Upon learning of a support group that meets weekly at the restaurant, she attends but doesn’t find it entirely healing – one teenage girl is now orphaned because both her parents were murdered and one woman accuses Mia of hiding out in the bathroom during the shooting and selfishly locking the door so no one else could escape.    

One good thing that comes of this support group is Mia meeting Thomas, a man who was severely injured at the restaurant and still requires hospitalization for continued surgery and physical therapy for his damaged legs.  Together, they discuss the night in question and try to help each other.  But in recalling the events of that night, Mia remembers someone holding her hand during the shooting – a mysterious stranger with a tattoo on his wrist.  Who was this man?  Where is he?  Is he or was he a restaurant employee?  Did he survive the evening?  Mia becomes obsessed with finding this man in order to thank him for providing emotional support during their mutual travail – but can she find this needle in the haystack that is Paris?

Review

Perhaps the best part of “Revoir Paris” is Virginie Efira’s portrayal of Mia.  A sensitive, intelligent woman, Mia struggles to hold herself together after this incident and Efira makes this evident in many of her acting choices throughout the movie; Mia's dedication to self-care is seen as selfish by some, but is a necessary part of her recovery process.  The challenges she faces not only include resolving open issues after the attack but also dealing with the relationships she had before.  From the outset, she is obviously a sympathetic character and that never changes for the remainder of the film. 

While the central focus of the movie is Mia dealing with her grief so she can effectively move on with the rest of her life, it morphs into something of a mystery or detective story.  If there’s one criticism of the film, it is that there’s very little if any reference to the attack itself insofar as who did it, why and if the guilty were ever brought to justice.  Perhaps this is because filmmaker Alice Winocour made a choice that doing so might turn this into something of a crime drama and take the story into a different direction; that said, allusions to the follow-up by the police probably would have been helpful. 

One annoyance – albeit slight – is the fact that Mia easily finds herself in a new romantic situation when the relationship with her long-time partner seems to be winding down, largely because of the result of the assault.  Although somewhat complicated by virtue of Thomas being married, the romance with Mia is telegraphed almost from the beginning – and the reveal of his wife is deliberately held off until late in the game. In all likelihood, he probably doesn’t bring it up because it’s not relevant to any of the discussions they have been having – and of equal convenience, Mia never bothers to ask.