Successful director Jacques Audiard isn’t easily pegged. This collaboration with Céline Sciamma is an adaptation of two stories from two American graphic novels, depicting life and love for three relatively young men and women in a part of Paris: Émilie (Lucie Zhang), who takes in a roommate (Makita Samba) whom she immediately begins a sexual relationship with; and Nora (Noémie Merlant) who’s mistaken for a popular camgirl and finds herself intrigued.

Frequently engaging, about complicated emotions and the consequences of immature acts. Well-acted, filmed in intense black-and-white that makes the movie look both realistic and poetic.

2021-France. 106 min. B/W. Directed by Jacques Audiard. Screenplay: Céline Sciamma, Léa Mysius, Jacques Audiard. Stories: Adrian Tomine (”Amber Sweet”, ”Killing and Dying”). Cinematography: Paul Guilhaume. Cast: Lucie Zhang (Émilie Wong), Makita Samba (Camille Germain), Noémie Merlant (Nora Ligier), Jehnny Beth, Océane Caïraty. 

Trivia: Original title: Les Olympiades. 

Last word: “[Paris] almost has a museum-like quality to it. There are not a lot of different perspectives that you can get as you move around the city. I think that when I was doing this, I wasn’t filming it thinking about putting it in a context of other films that have been filmed in black and white. I mean, for me, what I wanted to do is shoot a modern story. My characters are evolving, and they’re evolving in a modern city, which happens to be Paris. I wanted to avoid that nostalgia that sometimes goes along with that idea when you film in black and white.” (Audiard, Slant Magazine)