With her last feature directorial credit being contributions to 1991’s Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, Eleanor Coppola is perhaps better known as Francis Ford Coppola’s wife than a filmmaker. Yet, she triumphantly returns this year with one of the sexiest and most joyful road movies in some time with Paris Can Wait.
This spiked bonbon of a movie has Diane Lane playing Anne, a woman that is slowly starting to get frustrated with the constant traveling of her Hollywood producer husband (Alec Baldwin). She is left alone once again during the Cannes Film Festival and needs to get to Paris by nighttime. Life at home for Anne is boring and routine, with her daughter leaving to pursue her studies abroad and her husband needing to fly to Egypt to deal with a problematic high-budget production. Anne might be hitting her mid-fifties, but there’s still an independent, free-thinking sexual awakening waiting to explode in her.
This leads to her being playfully lured to go on a two-day road trip through the south of France with Baldwin’s business partner Jacques (Arnaud Viard), a man that lives life to the fullest and delights in showing her some of the best food, art, and views in the south. Their destination is Paris, but he keeps on delaying the travels to pit stop any chance he gets. Whether it’s a fancy restaurant, a historic museum, a beautiful church, a delectable winery or having picnic in a magnificent countryside, Jacques is relentless and insistent in showing Anne just how marvelous his homeland truly is.