Emily in Paris :Review

Emily in Paris

 Cast:

Lily Collins (Emily Cooper)

Lucas Bravo (Gabriel)

Camille Razat (Camille)

Philippine Leroy (Sylvie)

Ashley Park (Mindy Chen)

 

 Right during the peak of Covid-19, Netflix launched a rom-com staring Lily Collins, who is from United states, works in marketing industry, is a social media influencer with some Instagram following and due to some work related reasons she had to move to Paris  without learning the french language. This show for some is a great time kill with beautiful faces, pretty scenes with romance and comedy, but on the other hand it is overall criticized for having promoting false taboos about France and french culture.

The first few episodes of season 1 perfectly captures the dichotomy between the Americans and French. Emily who is living every white American girl’s dream life by moving to Europe, becoming Instagram influencer with some fan-following and hooking up with almost every pretty guy she runs into. Also gets a cultural shock from the moment she stepped on the french soil.

 

She is entitled in the way that Americans are, simply not realizing that the American way is not the only or always the correct way, and that the world doesn’t revolve around the Americans and their culture or spin on their axis. The French are proud as they are miss no opportunity to remind her of this. The best example of Emily’s American superiority complex was that she stepped in the office of a Luxury brand in Paris without knowing a single word of French except the ‘Oui’ and ‘Bonjour’. She expected everyone to communicate in fluent English in their own country and got back lashed for it but with her Positive Win-Win attitude, she decided to take up the classes without realizing the complexity of the language.

 

Emily’s error was  to constantly attempting to make Paris and her workplace, American. The city was appealing, but Emily couldn’t seem to see it through her lens. After many such instances we witness a very fine dialogue when a colleague of Emily tells her to abandon her perspective and look at the things with a different lens/perspective. He then brilliantly summarizes the U.S and Europe culture Paradox by saying ‘’You live to work, We work to live’’ .  

The show on several occasions exaggerates the culture difference as we saw Emily found most of the french people rude, and mean in her instance and that french smoke a lot and wear pretty outfits. Such is not the case in reality as not every French is cold towards the foreigners specifically Americans and not everyone wear pretty fits to work.

 

However what kind of rom-com it would be without Emily having multiple love interests, her options in terms of beaus range from a chef who lives in her building to a professor, to a guy she met at a party, to her friends brother whose boyfriend she also had a fling with, to a millionaire who may have her boss as her mistress, Practically every man in France wants to flirt with her, the only men who didn’t flirt with her were her gay colleagues. This show offers the modern day fairy tale where the leading character is not some mighty  hero going on her journey which is long lost, she is an every-girl, at the end of the day she dreams of happiness and success. Her love life is a mess but every position she finds herself in magically unravels.