dir. Jethro Massey | UK | 2024 | 109’

Q&A with the director

An unconventional romantic comedy about a young American photographer and a French girl with a taste for the macabre. Paul & Paulette’s chance encounter on a Parisian boulevard sparks an unusual friendship that grows around a dark game; reenacting scenes of notorious crimes from bygone eras at the sites they occurred.

The protagonists' journey takes them to a place where the lines between fantasy and reality become increasingly blurred, forcing them to confront their past and their emotions.

“Paul & Paulette” is a brilliant and subversive love story that blends elements of the French New Wave with the surreal poetics of Wes Anderson. It explores encounters that enable us to truly understand ourselves. 

The film has won the Venice Critics’ Week Audience Award and the Venice “Cinema & Arts - Best Film” award, and it was nominated for the Biennale’s “Queer Lion.”

JETHRO MASSEY - British-French film director and producer; author of documentaries, music videos and award-winning short films, including “Never Apply Salt to Attract a Potential Lover,” - a surreal silent romantic comedy in an aesthetic close to Wes Anderson's cinema, “Trauma Industries,” - a 35mm-shot dystopian sci-fi about the role of advertising in the modern world and “Madame Grenier's Toaster,” - a tender and perverse story about a marrrige with a not-so-talkative... kitchen utensil. “Paul & Paulette Take a Bath” is his feature debut.