In an era saturated with formulaic romantic comedies, Jethro Massey’s debut feature “Paul and Paulette Take a Bath” emerges as a refreshingly unconventional entry that dares to find romance in the shadows of history. This audacious film, which won the Audience Award at Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, transforms the City of Light into something far more complex—a playground for morbid curiosity and unexpected connection.

A Fresh Take on Familiar Ground

What immediately strikes you about Massey’s vision is how the film keeps surprising with fresh writing. From the opening scene of Paulette reenacting Marie Antoinette’s beheading on the very spot where it occurred, to the cornucopia of communion cookies that becomes an unexpectedly intimate moment, the screenplay consistently subverts expectations. The director’s innovative approach shines particularly in his use of what appears to be original footage and archival coverage, seamlessly weaving historical documentation into the narrative fabric. This isn’t just clever filmmaking—it’s a bold stylistic choice that grounds the characters’ macabre tourism in unsettling reality.

The film capitalises perfectly on our collective fascination with true crime, offering what feels like a grim tour of Paris that reveals the city’s darkest corners. It’s a concept that could easily veer into exploitation, but Massey handles it with surprising sensitivity and wit.

A Mesmerising Leading Performance

Marie Benati delivers what can only be described as a mesmerising performance as Paulette. Her portrayal of this enigmatic woman—quirky, unpredictable, eating lemons like apples and collecting morbid stories like souvenirs—is nothing short of captivating. Benati brings a magnetic quality to the role that makes Paulette’s eccentricities feel authentic rather than contrived. She embodies the character’s contradictions beautifully: vulnerable yet empowered, whimsical yet deeply serious about her dark obsessions.

The cinematography and colour correction work in perfect harmony with Benati’s performance. Even on the moodiest Parisian day, you find yourself drawn into her eyes, lost in the visual poetry that cinematographer creates around her presence. The film’s visual language is consistently stunning, painting Paris not as the romantic postcard we’re accustomed to, but as a place where beauty and darkness coexist.

Playing with Stereotypes

Of course, “Paul and Paulette” isn’t immune to certain cultural clichés. Let’s play French girl stereotype bingo: French girls are crazy—tick. They don’t shave—tick. An obligatory toilet scene—mercifully, we miss that one, thank god. While these elements risk reducing Paulette to a manic pixie dream girl archetype, Benati’s performance transcends these limitations. Her Paulette feels like a fully realised person rather than a collection of quirks designed to enchant an American protagonist.

An Empowered Woman and a Smitten American

At its heart, this is a portrait of an empowered woman and a hopelessly in love American. Jérémie Galiana’s Paul serves as our entry point into Paulette’s world—he’s the tourist, both literally and figuratively, being guided through experiences that challenge his comfortable assumptions about romance, history, and human nature. The dynamic between them feels authentic precisely because it acknowledges the power imbalance: Paulette controls the narrative, while Paul struggles to keep up with her intellectual and emotional complexity.

A Dark Romance for Our Times

Critics have noted the film’s debt to French New Wave cinema, particularly Jacques Rivette, and there’s certainly something of that playful, improvisational spirit here. But Massey brings a contemporary sensibility to these influences, creating something that feels both timeless and urgently current. In an age where dark tourism and true crime podcasts dominate our cultural landscape, “Paul and Paulette” offers a meditation on our relationship with historical trauma and how we process collective memory.

The film isn’t without its flaws—some critics have noted tonal inconsistencies and moments where the concept threatens to overwhelm the characters. But these concerns feel minor when weighed against the film’s considerable achievements: its visual beauty, Benati’s magnetic performance, and Massey’s confident directorial voice.

Subverting Romance Conventions

Perhaps most intriguingly, Massey deliberately subverts romantic comedy conventions. While the film follows “a traditional romantic arc,” he wanted to “turn this on its head a little, to propose an alternative narrative.” Though we discover Paulette through Paul’s perspective, Massey notes that “ultimately his story isn’t about how he gets the girl, it is about how he comes to realise that Paulette has a more important story to live.”

This shift from romantic pursuit to recognition of friendship’s value reflects Massey’s belief that “while we often dream of great romances, I think great friendships are underrepresented in film.” The result is a story that leads its protagonist—and by extension, its audience—to understand “the importance of those platonic friendships.”

For Paulette herself, the historical recreations serve a deeply personal purpose: “Paulette tries to understand her own personal trauma and sense of guilt through her historical recreations with Paul. Determined not to intellectualise, and gloss over the awful facts, but to immerse herself in the pain of the moment.”

Final Verdict

“Paul and Paulette Take a Bath” is the kind of film that lingers long after the credits roll. It’s a work that respects its audience’s intelligence while never forgetting to entertain. Massey has crafted a love letter to Paris that acknowledges both its romance and its violence, its beauty and its darkness. For viewers willing to embrace its unconventional approach, this mesmerising debut offers rewards that extend far beyond typical romantic comedy fare.

In a cinematic landscape often afraid to take risks, “Paul and Paulette Take a Bath” stands as a reminder of what’s possible when filmmakers trust their vision and audiences trust them in return. Chef’s kiss, indeed.

Q&A with Jethro Massey

How did Paul & Paulette begin?

I was doing some writing on another project, and a photo popped up on a friend’s Facebook feed of a friend of mine sitting in Winston Churchill’s bathtub. He’d taken a selfie there. It reminded me of the famous photo of Lee Miller in Hitler’s bathtub; taken on the day Hitler had committed suicide. She was in his apartment in Munich.

There’s something really disturbing about the intimacy of a bathroom, the place where you see yourself naked in the mirror, where you brush your teeth, but it being Hitler’s bathroom. And then my friend’s fascination, wanting to show himself in Winston Churchill’s bathtub, really got me thinking about the way a place changes when you tell a story about it, and a sort of celebrity fascination, that I think we all get, but don’t think about much.

That was the birth of the idea of these characters that go to places where terrible thing shave happened and recreate those scenes- trying to find the little details in those sites, events and lives. There’s something unsettling about our fascination with these kinds of places; our human desire for car-crash rubbernecking, our attraction to true crime and historical tragedies…it felt like fertile ground to explore-something I wanted to try to understand a little better.

When did you start writing?

I started writing the script at the beginning of 2020 just before Covid, and then during Covid, I put it down. My head was in a different space. I picked it up again in April 2021. I went to Istanbul for a few weeks with my laptop to disconnect from the world and create the time and space for myself to finish the story.

In November 2021, I nailed my colours to the mast. I put a post out on Facebook saying, ‘I’m making a feature film, casting starting tomorrow.’ That was my way of making sure I did it, because once I said to the world, ‘I’m doing this’, I’d have to see it through. The potential for shame and embarrassment is a great motivator for me. That, and a sense of responsibility to other people when I ask them to put their time in to one of my projects.

We started shooting in early July 2022. It was a six-week shoot.

You’ve lived and worked in Paris, making shorts and music videos among other things for a long time. Did that help you here?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, there’s a lot of locations that we shot at that are quite hard to get.Things like the Conciergerie…they don’t usually let people film in Marie Antoinette’s cell.She’s such an important figure in France, and there’s a lot of controversy around her; Royalists and Republicans still fight over how her story should be told. Her cell is considered a place of respect for the dead, so they don’t let people shoot fiction in there usually…they’ll only occasionally let a documentary crew in.

I managed to have a chat with them and say, ‘Well, listen, it’s a fiction, but really, we’re just treating it like it’s the museum that Paul &Paulette are visiting.’ It was the same thing with Père-Lachaise. They very rarely let people film in there, they get so many requests, and again, it’s a place of respect for the dead, but because it was part of the script, the Communards Wall is in the cemetery itself, they saw that it was an essential part of our story, and let us in. Knowing the ins and outs of filming in Paris was useful…it’s tricky in terms of permits sometimes. The parks’ authorities are tough. But I know what the issues are. I know to get in touch with them two months ahead, send them the script, be ready for a bit of bureaucratic back and forth.

All those things. Getting permission to film in a church is similarly a bit difficult in the centre of Paris, especially with the scenes we were filming, but there was a beautiful one just outside of the city, much more amenable to shooting.

What was the casting process like?

I was really lucky to find Marie (Benati)and Jérémie (Galiana). For Paul, I wrote him as an English character. In the beginning, it made sense to do my search for Paul in the UK as it’s only a short hop over from Paris. I used all the usual platforms that one uses when putting casting announcements out for small indie films. It’s amazing how many incredibly talented actors there are out there, looking for good parts to get their teeth into. For Paul, I looked through all the casting sites in Paris too, but of all the showreels of bilingual actors in FranceI could find, Jérémie, a French-American actor, was really the only one who I thought might work. I wrote to him, said‘ Are you interested in reading the script?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ I sent it to him, and he didn’t get back to me until about three or four days before we were doing our last screen tests.

I was bringing over three or four guys from London who were all super talented, but Jérémie said, ‘I read the script, I like it.’ And I said, ‘Okay, well, it’s a little late, but let’s meet for a coffee tomorrow.’ I think I knew straight away that it was going to be him when I met him. It was an easy rewrite to have an American Paul rather than English one.

Marie was terrific from the start; she just came in during the first round of casting and owned the room and the character so beautifully. Again, we saw lot of great actors, but she stood out head and shoulders above everybody else as the right person to play Paulette. And then when I saw Marie and Jérémie together it was perfect. Marie was doing her walking-whirlwind Paulette, and Jérémie was so attentive to all she was doing, really listening to her, asking us to look at Paulette through Paul’s eyes…

How do you see Paul and Paulette’s relationship evolve?

What do they get from each other from recreating these moments in history? I wanted to write a story that centred the characters’ friendship over their romantic involvement with each other. I don’t think there are enough films about friendship.Paul comes from a position of the naïve outsider. He arrived in Paris with dreams of being something and the reality isn’t quite as rosy as he thought it would be.

And Paulette…she’s obviously got a taste for these dark things. Paul is drawn to that when he sees it. I knew they had to bring something to each other, and I knew that there was something there that was driving Paulette all along the way, as we find out in the film. We externalise the things that we don’t necessarily want to talk about; the game is a way for her working through her own personal trauma.

For Paul, he’s drawn to this strange game, and the darkness of it. But mostly, he’s drawn to Paulette, and probably would follow her into any game. The balance of the relationship changes a little bit along the way. Paulette realises that she’s got a bit of an ally in Paul, somebody who’s open and accepts her for who she is.

Of course, this complicates her emotions; she’s not used to trusting other people… she’s using the game to work through her own things. Paul’s using the game as a way of getting closer to her, but ultimately, he’s going to learn that his infatuation isn’t the most important thing in this relationship.

How did you choose the historical moments you selected?

The Marie Antoinette scene came pretty early on; this girl walking five steps, getting on her knees, lifting her hair, repeating the exercise…that was an obvious place for a foreigner to meet a French girl with morbid sensibilities, my starting point. After this I spent quite a bit of time just reading up, looking for objects and places… working out how I’d take them from there to Hitler’s bathroom. I built a deck of cards of French historical tragedies. I realised quite quickly it would be interesting for the games to follow their real chronology, knowing that the closer they got to recent events, the more uncomfortable things would become.

I suspected that for some people, they’d be crossing the line when they get to Hitler’s bathtub, but it might be elsewhere for other people. I did juggle a couple of things a little, in a way that took the characters from one place to the next more naturally, and so that it felt like they were upping the stakes a little each time.

What about the ending at the Bataclan? Were you nervous about including this?

I didn’t have the ending in the Bataclan apartment immediately, but once that fell out on to the page, it was just obvious that’s where it had to go, because that’s where you know everybody’s going to feel like ‘He’s gone too far.’ You put it down on the page, and then you think, ‘Shit.’ It had to be this. But there’s a responsibility that comes with it. Living in Paris, you know people who were there, friends, or friends of friends. One of the apartments we filmed in was on the same street as the restaurants that were attacked that day. I hope we walk the line of treating it with respect and sensitivity. It’s where Paul realises he’s gone too far…that’s important of course.

Can you talk about the costumes?They are so vivid on screen…

My costume designer Joanna Wojtowiczis from the vintage, retro world in Paris. I wouldn’t say I move in those circles, but I’m adjacent to them. They are a good friend that I hang outwith a little, friendships based in a deep respect foreach other’s work. They’ve helped me out a lot with music videos and short films.

And Joanna’s from that world. She’s got an incredible eye for costume, colours, materials. And everything married together well- the locations, the costumes, the colours…I think Joanna had more trouble dressing Paul. She told me that for inspiration, she had to Google ‘basic straight white male’!