FILMS
ARIS 13TH DISTRICT Usually associated with crime-related drama (, , ), writer-director Jacques Audiard has been French cinema’s most consistent contemporary auteur. But he recently took a sidestep with an English-language Western, , and for his latest film he’s trying something different again. The French title is – after a high-rise project in southern Paris’s 13th arrondissement which provides the film’s setting. This is a comedy-drama of 21st-century sexual and social manners, set among the young local residents. Emilie (played by terrific newcomer No 1, Lucie Zhang) hails from a Taiwanese immigrant family, enjoying the single life but hating her dreary telesales job. Camille (equally terrific newcomer No 2, Makita Samba) is a literary teacher who becomes Emilie’s no-strings lover when he replies to her flatmate ad. Nora (Noémie Merlant,) is a Sorbonne student whose life is turned upside down when she is mistaken for online sex worker “Amber Sweet” – played in blonde wig and heavy tattoos by Savages’ Jehnny Beth.
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