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Fauteuils d'Orchestre/Avenue Montaigne
Daniele Thompson's "Fauteuils d'Orchestre", France's 2006 entry for the Oscar, will remind any expatriate why s/he came to Paris. The film sings to the essence of what Paris is supposed to be about: the divinity of art in a beautiful setting.
Three successful arts aficionados˜one composer, one actress, and one aging businessman-cum-collector" break through walls of frustration in their lives, as they embrace a higher form of art. The composer strips to the waist in his last performance, rebelling against the stifling codes of haute-musique culture; the actress (played by a spectacular Valerie Lemercier), stifled by the mediocrity of tv and farce, reinvents her lines on stage and earns her first serious role (as Simone de Beauvoir); the old businessman refuses, at the last moment, to auction off his stunning Brancusi statue, "Le Baiser", and hugs his 20 year old girlfriend instead.
The Eiffel Tower sparkles in the last scene in triumph
On its recent release in Los Angeles, "Fauteuils d'Orchestre,' reborn as "Avenue Montaigne," already did better than any other French film in the circuit. This week it opens in the Big Apple.  Director Daniele Thompson
The question: is this Paris wishful thinking? The film's upwardly bourgeois artistes on avenue Montaigne (the showcase avenue of Prada, Gucci and Nina Ricci) show none of the Paris so heavily spotlighted in the news these last years: the Paris of the CPE riots or the Clearstream scandals. It also makes light of certain real problems in the workforce in Paris, i.e. the fact that the young lady cannot get her job in a brasserie, because "biensur, pas de femmes". Indeed it imports the American myth of rise-to-riches to France, while keeping French tradition well intact.
The central thread of "Avenue Montaigne" is working class ingénue Jessica who comes to Paris from the provinces, prepared to do anything˜bar-tend, housekeep, sleep on couches˜in order to be near "La Luxe": to be its most adoring voyeuse. At the end of the film, like every other character in the movie, wide-eyed Jessica has it all: love, luxury, money and art.
Is this Paris for real? The director, Danielle Thompson, greeting me in her swivel chair at the W Hotel in Union Square, NYC, seemed taken aback by the question. This Paris, this story, is very real to her. Avenue Montaigne is like that: full of bustle. And people like Jessica, with a kind openness, genuinely exist.
 Christopher Thompson and Cecile
I noted that he and his mother--the directors!--did, however, choose to end the movie on an up note--with everyone in embrace.
Was their intention to leave audiences feeling good?
"Yes," Christopher asserted. "It was our intention." His mother continued: "In my movie La Buche, I start the movie with a funeral, but within five minutes you hear a cell phone go off. That sets the tone. You know you are watching a comedy. We wanted to set a clear tone for this movie as well: it is--despite the suffering of the characters--a comedy."
Suffering? What about suffering concerns this mother-son team? "No one is happy with where they are sitting, hence the title. No one is satisfied with what they have. Everyone wants more," chimed in mother and son, in an unusually harmonious chord. "No one has the recognition one wants. The actress wants an elite audience; the composer wants to appeal more to the masses...."
"Let's face it. Life is a tragedy," added Christopher. "We all die at the end. So it all depends on how you set the tone. We chose to make it upbeat." And upbeat, Avenue Montaigne certainly is. The fairy-girl Jessica, the fil rouge of this gaie histoire, exemplifies that cheerful tone: open and naive....
"Naive!! No, no. She is not naive," rejoined Daniele Thompson. "She is not naive at all! She knows to order the most expensive drink on the menu!" Fauteuils d'Orchestre is still playing in Paris, no not in the arrondissements of "luxe" but in the hinterland of the l5th, at Saint Lambert.
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