Charlotte is a single mother, Simon is a married father. The two meet at a party where Charlotte hits him straight out: “I really want to sleep with you”. Their first meeting then ends with her in the bedroom. “Diary of a Parisian Affair” by Emmanuel Mouret is a film about the art of making love without falling in love, because both make a pact: sex without romance and only as long as it’s fun.
Charlotte (Sandrine Kiberlain) is a self-confident and relationship-broken woman. She has been through a divorce and no longer has a nerve for complicated relationships. She doesn’t believe in the legend that good sex is only possible with emotions. And Simon (Vincent Macaigne), shy and married for 20 years, has always dreamed of a non-committal affair.
Feelings come into play
But the chemistry is not only right when having sex in hotel rooms and empty apartments of friends. They see each other more often and longer and spend idyllic weekends in the countryside. Feelings creep in that neither of them really wanted. The first signs of jealousy appear.
Simon reacts suspiciously when Charlotte tells of the unabashed and welcome advances made by a young man she met on the bus. Charlotte also changes her behavior. So she suddenly turns up at Simon’s workplace, where he is preparing pregnant women for childbirth. In order to drive away the first storm clouds, they enter into a love triangle with young Louise.
Since debuting in 2000 with the witty “Laissons Lucie faire!” 52-year-old Mouret has not strayed from his line, exploring the thousand and one mysteries of love from film to film. He has been nominated and awarded for many works, such as “The Art of Loving”, “The Price of Temptation” and “Easier Said Than Done”. Macaigne already plays the leading role in it.
“Diary of a Paris Affair” (originally: “Chronique d’une liaison passagère”) is one of Mouret’s most beautiful love stories. Well-crafted dialogues, situations bordering on the burlesque that never drift into the ridiculous and touching snapshots: a brilliantly acted comedy, behind whose lightness Mouret portrays something very fragile.
Diary of a Paris affair, France 2022, 100 min., FSK oA, by Emmanuel Mouret, with Sandrine Kiberlain, Vincent Macaigne, Georgia Scalliet
