By: Lieba Nesis
Emily in Paris’s heavy reliance on French stereotypes of rude behavior and sexual promiscuity has ignited an uproar amongst Parisians. This Netflix show created by Sex and the City’s Darren Star premiered on October 2, 2020 to dismal reviews and abundant controversy. The show runs ten half-hour episodes and has garnered a tremendous following. Anachronisms abound in this comedy-drama which is replete with scenarios antithetical to the #MeToo, and yellow vest movement-the pandemic had not yet occurred.
The idyllic view of France with perfect scenery, spectacular views, and a thriving economy are misleading at best. Negative French stereotypes are exaggerated as Parisians are depicted as lazy, ignorant, hateful and anti-American. The protagonist Emily, played by Lilly Collins, is a career oriented American who lives in a fantasy ridden bubble in Chicago where she is employed by a marketing firm who relocates her to Paris for a year to help newly acquired marketing firm Savoir obtain an American point of view. Savoir prefers to keep things mysterious by being virtually nonexistent on social media. The cast is mostly seen eating, drinking, smoking or smirking at Emily-very little work gets done.
The men are portrayed as womanizing scoundrels with long locks and sexy accents as they repeatedly throw themselves at the nondescript Emily. Their workplace behavior is pre-Gloria Steinem as exemplified by Antoine, the owner of perfume company Maison Lavaux, who sends Emily lingerie to thank her for her campaign ideas in one scene while lasciviously smelling her neck as his wife and mistress stand inches away in another. Judging from the show it is doubtful the French have ever heard of Harvey Weinstein or Jeffrey Epstein. When Emily joins her friend Camille at her family’s chateau the father appears naked while Emily is mistaken into having sex with Camille’s 17-year-old brother whom she thinks is the older brother. Upon Emily’s departure Camille’s mother takes Emily aside to find out if her teenager was a good lover-are the French that depraved?
The movie is a pastiche of numerous lighthearted films such as The Devil Wears Prada, Sex and the City, Clueless, Crazy Rich Asians, How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days and others. Dressed by Patricia Fields, Emily is a mix between Audrey Hepburn, even mimicking her chain-on-the-forehead look, and Anne Hathaway from The Devil Wears Prada with a naïveté that conjures Mary Tyler Moore. Her attire is colorful yet all over the place, too many colors, little sex appeal and a beret collection that is as outdated as Saturday Night Fever. We are first introduced to her boss Sylvie, a Miranda Priestly replica from “The Devil Wears Prada” on steroids. She and her colleagues are so flagrantly rude they call Emily “Le Plouc” (the hick) to her face-they are obviously unaware of the app called Google translate. Sylvie, expertly played by Philippine Leroy Beaulieu, prefers to keep things a mystery by ignoring the explosion of Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
Emily is the social media star of the Parisian office-despite her Instagram following peaking at 21,000; a drop in the bucket for those in the know. Emily is forced to bring light to the natives as her colleagues in France seem completely unfamiliar with the most basic tenets in advertising-such as achieving goodwill with the consumer. A big to do is made about her inability to speak French as she is continually maligned for this epic faux paus. Even after dozens of language lessons all Lily Collins can muster is a weak “bonjour”-I hope she gets her money back. We are also treated to some cheesy French secrets-such as the first floor actually residing one floor up. This provides a convenient excuse for Emily to continually enter her fourth floor neighbor’s apartment when she resides on the fifth. Of course the tenant, Gabriel, played effortlessly by Lucas Bravo, (most of the names in the show are hackneyed French ones) happens to be a gorgeous chef who is also dating her close friend Camille.
Apparently France is so small that one of Emily’s only friends, Camille, is dating her neighbor Gabriel, who also happens to be a chef at the restaurant across the street which she randomly dines at. Camille, is so clueless she fails to pick up on the obvious chemistry between her boyfriend and Emily-encouraging Emily to sit on Gabriel’s lap during their road trip while the two exchange seductive glances that go unnoticed by Camille.
Gabriel’s busy schedule as the lead chef at restaurant Les Deux Comperes never interferes with him answering the door for Emily in various states of undress day or night. Emily’s friends and lovers are mostly procured on the street including Mindy Chen, played by Ashley Park, who is a Chinese Korean nanny, whose father is the uber wealthy “Zipper King” of China. Park’s acting is dreadful and her voice is not much better; as we learn from a drag karaoke bar where she wows her spoiled Asian friends with her mediocre singing acumen-straight out of “A Star is Born’s” La Vie En Rose and “Crazy Rich Asians”.
The cliches continue as Emily is requested by Sylvie at the atelier of haute couturier Pierre Cadault, (an amalgam of designers Pierre Cardin and Karl Lagerfeld). Emily, a twenty-something novice, continues to outsmart peers three times her age, as she convinces client Cadaut to create a dress for a Louvre charity. Emily models the swan Bjork-like dress which is splattered with paint by up-and-coming designers Grey Space who give the winning bid. Cadaut is so horrified by this brazenly disrespectful act he threatens to quit designing until a furloughed Emily saves the day by staging a fashion show by Cadaut on the premises of Grey Space’s venue.
Of course, Cadaut has a gorgeous long-haired son named Mathieu who is smitten with Emily and woos her with every corny line in the book. While the costume designers paid painstaking attention to the men’s hair weaves they were less careful with the character’s teeth-most of which appeared yellow. The series concludes with some predictable cliffhangers including Gabriel’s decision to move to Normandy upended by Antoine offering to finance his restaurant purchase of Les Deux Comperes and the predictable night of lust between Gabriel and Emily which leaves Camille texting Emily to meet. While Emily in Paris has yet to be renewed it has appeared on the Top 5 most popular Netflix shows for the past three weeks. I myself binge-watched all five hours of this escapist program that had me forgetting the word “pandemic” for one night only. The show was as indulgent as eating a cheese crusted pizza maskless in the middle of Madison Square Garden-an image that seemed mundane seven months ago.
