LOST IN PARIS : Tuesday 28th August 2018.

I saw 'LOST IN PARIS' this week at my local independent movie theatre and was unexpectedly swept along by this whimsical, quirky French/Belgian Co-Produced comedy film that owes much to the comedic timing and sight gags of Charlie Chaplin and Jacques Tati. The film was screened at the Telluride Film Festival way back in September 2016, had its French and Belgian Premiers in March 2017 and only now does it get a limited release in Australia. The film has met with generally positive Reviews and was Co-Directed, Co-Produced, Co-Written and Co-Stars in the two lead roles Fiona Gordon and Dominique Abel. The film has picked up three award wins and two nominations from around the festival circuit, along the way.

The film opens up with a very plain looking Fiona (Fiona Gordon) working as a Librarian in some snow swept little mountain village we assume in the Canadian Rockies. A colleague blows in to the library hut with a raging blizzard going on outside the door, and she delivers a letter to Fiona sitting at the desk. The letter is from her sprightly, fiercely independent and generally with-it 88 year old Aunt Martha (Emmanuelle Riva) in Paris who is seeking Fiona's help (as her last surviving relative) as she is about to be forced into an old age home, which she is keen to avoid at all costs.

Arriving in Paris like a fish outta water, Fiona is a stranger in a strange land. But, it is summer time, the sun shines, the skies are blue and Paris is a beautiful place. Wandering around the city she comes across a Canadian Mountie (Frederic Meert) who happens to be in Paris on a training course. Their exchange is friendly, brief and at first regular purely by accident rather than by design. She stops on a bridge with the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower and asks a random passer by to take her photo. She takes a backward step, to pose for said photograph and promptly stumbles and falls into the Seine and sinks to the bottom losing her backpack and all her possessions in the River. She is rescued by onlookers from a passing sightseeing river boat.

Her backpack is washed ashore a short time later and is retrieved by Dom (Dominique Abel) a down and out living rough and sleeping in a small tent by the waters edge. Meanwhile, Fiona has made it to Martha's house, wet but drying out, but Martha is not at home it seems. Fiona has lost all her money, her phone and her passport as well as clothing and other travel essentials. She goes the next day to the Canadian Embassy in Paris to seek assistance, rather tearful at her predicament. They are sympathetic and give Fiona a food voucher so she can at least get a square meal that night.

Later that evening Dom, having rummaged through Fiona's backpack and helped himself to a yellow sweater, her passport and all her cash decides to lash out on an expensive meal at a local riverside floating restaurant. There he meets Fiona who has used up her food voucher and was finishing her meal. Dom, who is on a high after downing a bottle of Champagne, asks the female dining patrons for a dance, all of whom reject his advances. He comes across Fiona sat all alone, and promptly grabs her onto the dance floor. What follows is a dance routine that is a comedic delight and a sight to behold as the pair wildly exaggerate their dance moves whilst keeping perfect time to the beat of the music. After the pair have danced Dom is more than generous with his tipping, and purchases three bottles of Champagne so that the pair can have a night cap. However, at this point Fiona notices Dom using her purse to pull out wads of cash from, and confronts him. He does a bolt, and in her chase she falls into the Seine, for a second time.

By now Dom has come to the realisation that he loves Fiona. Feeling guilty, he returns her backpack to the Canadian Embassy where she retrieves it later that day. Now that she has got her possessions back she goes in search of her Aunt once more, but is told by a local cafe owner that she had passed away and given the directions to the funeral, across the city via several train journeys. Dom has followed his new found love and is able to guide Fiona to the cemetery from a distance. A small select gathering of friends is in attendance and Fiona is asked to say a few words but declines. Dom volunteers his services despite not knowing Martha from a bar of soap. He begins with kind words and praise but then descends into a diatribe of her being a secret racist who hated badly dressed people and the homeless and blacks, and if you happened to be all three then that really was too bad.

At the small reception immediately after Fiona realises that the funeral was for Matha's friend, Marthe. To be sure, the pair open up the coffin to double check on the identity of the corpse, at which point Dom gets his tie stuck in the coffin lid when he reseals it. In her panic, Fiona gets her nose jammed in the elevator doors, while Dom is stuck inside the lift with the coffin as it is lifted upwards for the cremation. When Fiona comes around from her nose trauma, she is handed a casket which she instantly assumes contains the ashes for both Marthe and Dom. Spreading the ashes on an empty plot in the cemetery, Dom strides up with a huge arrangement of funeral flowers hiding his face. When Fiona realises that Dom is in fact alive and kicking, she slaps him angrily and waltzes off.

In the meantime, Martha has been on the run and in hiding from the nurses whom she believes want to take her away to an aged care facility. She too has rocked up to the funeral of her good friend Marthe, albeit late, and in the cemetery outside she meets with a long lost friend Duncan (Pierre Richard). They recount a time 27 years ago when they were allegedly intimate and whilst seated on a park bench engage in some whimsical foot dancing, which is straight out of Chaplin's play book and another standout sight gag. Afterwards the pair kiss and part company as a nurse siddles up to Duncan clearly to take him back to his aged care place of residence. Martha crosses paths with Dom on a number of occasions but keeps missing Fiona believing anyhow that she never responded to her letter.

After getting a dressing down by Fiona, Dom goes back to his tent to lick his wounds and get drunk on the three bottles of Champagne he'd retrieved floating by that Fiona had dropped in the water when she fell overboard from the restaurant the other night. There he meets with Martha who is in hiding at the same place. They get drunk together. By now Fiona has gained access to Martha's apartment and falls asleep on her bed looking at an old photo album. Down by the river, Dom and Martha sleep in his tent on the banks of the Seine. Fiona and Dom each have an erotic dream about the other, calling out each others name repeatedly in their sleep. This results in Dom having sex with Martha, believing her to be Fiona. Martha goes outside and lights up a cigarette and finds Fiona's phone in the garbage bin. Randomly tapping at the screen she hits a redial button and calls her own apartment. Fiona is woken from her slumber and the pair connect briefly, saying that she has just made love to a handsome man and is in New York.

Putting the cryptic clue together, Fiona jumps in a taxi which drops her off at a replica of the Statue of Liberty on the banks of the river. There she meets Dom, and persuades him to help find her Aunt, who by now has vanished again. Dom uses a dog that has befriended him to track Martha's scent, which leads them to the Eiffel Tower. The pair scale the Eiffel Tower to the very top where the find Martha asleep in a satellite dish. The three sit out on a beam high above the city and watch the sunrise over Paris.

'Lost in Paris' is a very light hearted quirky joy ride of a film that never lets up on its humour, well placed sight gags, physical comedy and use of inventive slapstick and pratfalls, whilst weaving a reasonably grounded storyline. This film won't be for everyone, but it is uniquely different and well paced and sharply choreographed that it certainly stands out from the largely American cookie cutter comedy that we are all too often spoon fed today. Letting action speak louder than words, this film is sparse on dialogue, but don't let that distract you from this delightful little film that punches well above its weight. Catch it while you can.

'Lost in Paris' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-