The recent picture Juliet, Naked (2018)—in which no one gets naked—is amusing and poignant and pleasantly, vividly acted by Rose Byrne and Ethan Hawke.  However, the story it tells is not as rich, or as interesting, as that in the Nick Hornby novel it derives from.  In fact it becomes contrived and forced.

Scripted by two women and one man, it is skeptical of the male sex and, up to a point, traditional living.  It ends with a dose of boring contemporary feminism:  You can have it all, Annie (Byrne’s character)!  Whether she can have it all or not, it’s hackneyed.

I’m sorry Nick Hornby was involved in the making of this film.  His novel is a success.  The film is not.  It was directed by Jesse Peretz and produced by Judd Apatow, still a mediocrity.

Michel Garfinkiel used the phrase “classic French society” in the May 2007 issue of Commentary magazine.  The sentence he wrote was:  “Classic French society—the one that lasted from the revolution to the end of the 20th century, that is on display in the pages of the great French novelists, and that features in the work of the great film-makers from Renoir to Truffaut, from Chabrol to Sautet—was based first and foremost on strong nuclear families.”

Some years after the 20th century’s end, Avenue Montaigne (2006), by Daniele Thompson, appears and classic French society is all over it.  What we see is as classic as anything in Renoir or Truffaut, and (alas) it’s a society that no longer exists.  I deplore having to add, however, that strong nuclear families are not behind it.  People both married and raising children do not show up in the film.

That isn’t why Montaigne makes me nervous, though.  Its final moments seem to impart that neurosis trumps all, that no matter how neurotic your desire for something is, and no matter how neurotic your behavior, the something you desire can and should be yours.  Thus the silly, fretful concert pianist gets what he wants, and so does the self-absorbed, hysterical actress hankering to play Simone de Beauvoir in a movie.  Is this really the happy denouement Thompson wants?

But don’t get me wrong.  For all this, Montaigne is enjoyable.  It has no plot and yet it’s interesting.  It is airy and sweet and enticingly acted.  It’s arrantly, lovingly Parisian too.  Just don’t expect the great French novelists with their classic French society.

(In French with English subtitles.)

Cover of Avenue Montaigne

Adapted from a novel, Paris Blues (1961) is an American film set in Paris and slightly influenced by European cinema, but still very conventionally made.

It concerns the lives and loves of two American jazz musicians, one white (Paul Newman) the other black (Sidney Poitier), living in the French capital.  Newman, Poitier, Joanne Woodward and Diahann Carroll all maintain memorable presence; all give solid, often warmly pleasing, performances.  There is good music with Louis Armstrong on hand, but the film’s dialogue is usually unremarkable, even obtuse.  Still, it’s a not-great but not-bad effort by none other than Martin Ritt (Hud, Norma Rae).  You’ll like the actors, and there is chemistry between the lovers.

Adapted from a novel, Paris Blues (1961) is an American film set in Paris and slightly influenced by European cinema, but still very conventionally made.

It concerns the lives and loves of two American jazz musicians, one white (Paul Newman) the other black (Sidney Poitier), living in the French capital.  Newman, Poitier, Joanne Woodward and Diahann Carroll all maintain memorable presence; all give solid, often warmly pleasing, performances.  There is good music with Louis Armstrong on hand, but the film’s dialogue is usually unremarkable, even obtuse.  Still, it’s a not-great but not-bad effort by none other than Martin Ritt (Hud, Norma Rae).  You’ll like the actors, and there is chemistry between the lovers.

Alzheimer’s disease rages on.  Tons of money will be needed for the care, at home and in nursing homes, for those afflicted with it.  But this is not all that poses a problem.

So many people in America, Europe and elsewhere have borne so few children that when they come down with Alzheimer’s or some other dementia, or suffer a debilitating stroke, they will enter a nursing home without a relative’s solicitude.  (This has been written about by William Voegeli.)  The spouses of these people will be dead or at least cripplingly ill, and siblings will be sparse.  No family members will be checking up on these patients, no intercessions will be made.  If there is nursing-home abuse or neglect, no communication about it will ever be forthcoming; the patient himself cannot protest it.  We must determine what is to be done about this—and about the necessary funding for care—or else . . .

Euthanasia?  Yes.  There will be far more of it in both Europe and America.  And, to get even further down to brass tacks, mass suicides might occur once aging people realize that dementia is starting to affect them.  They’ll be terrified of the future.

Past centuries faced their nightmares.  This will be our nightmare.  What, really, would dissuade people from seeing suicide as the solution?