Lost in Paris
Amazon recognizes social media’s increasing influence on television. Through its Instant Video platform, the bookseller-turned-everything store crowd-tests TV pilots, handing viewers the power to select which of these first chapters get to bloom into complete series. Betting on a new show based on user comments and feedback is as much a game of luck and chance as it is a manifestation of democracy, which makes the exercise irresistible to savvy audiences.
Among Amazon’s latest small-screen offerings, of which there are five, The Cosmopolitans shows the greatest signs of future success. The winsome prologue follows a group of young American expats traversing Paris in search of love and fulfillment, occasionally pausing to wonder if they’ve made the right decision in moving to France.
References to French chef Auguste Escoffier and Art Basel Miami abound as do allusions to a privileged past, making it easy to dismiss these self-involved intellectuals as stuffy and pretentious by those alien to this Woody Allen-esque world. But as unapologetically elitist as The Cosmopolitans is, it too is grounded by such existential loneliness and self-loathing that it never feels contrived. These outsiders want to be accepted as real Parisians, even if only by each other.
INSTANT FAN
I became an instant fan of director Whit Stillman after discovering The Last Days of Disco — a 1998 film about young, good-looking Ivy League graduates who are obsessed with being admitted to the right clubs — a decade ago. Working my way back to his 1990 debut Metropolitan and 1994’s Barcelona, both of which have aged gracefully, I encountered a director with a limited but influential oeuvre. It took Stillman 13 years to produce 2011’s Damsels in Distress — whose heroine wants the world to be a gentler place. The Cosmopolitans, completed with relative speed, contains elements of his first three projects and functions very much like the fourth film.
The Cosmopolitans moves briskly and concludes just as we’re getting to know the characters. The real revelation is Carrie MacLemore, who previously appeared in Damsels in Distress. Her Aubrey made the trip for a French boyfriend who’s unfortunately moved on, and it is with this naïveté that she dissects her expatriate experience. The biggest stars in the cast are Chloë Sevigny, who plays a snooty fashion journalist, and Adam Brody, whom Stillman never saw on his breakout series, The O.C.
Even the bit players are judiciously deployed: Dree Hemingway, Ernest’s granddaughter and an accomplished model, also makes a brief appearance as an attractive Canadian who meets Brody’s Jimmy at a party hosted by the wealthy “pipsqueak” Fritz (Freddy Åsblom).
PRIVILEGED PATH
Of course, the City of Lights is, in itself, a vital member of the ensemble. Stillman imbues the project with a level of authenticity, having lived in Paris for nine years after completing The Last Days of Disco. It’s easy to picture him spending time at Café de Flore discussing art with fellow transplants or scribbling away — as Jordan Rountree’s fine-boned Hal does — during his 12-plus year hiatus.
Introduced by Joan Osborne singing Jimmy Ruffin’s What Becomes of the Brokenhearted in both English and French, The Cosmopolitans’ pilot is witty and insightful, and stands on its own as a short film. I see it treading the same privileged path as Amazon’s Transparent. (Following its February premiere, the full season of Jill Soloway’s dramedy — starring Jeffrey Tambor as a late-in-life transgender woman and Jay Duplass, Gaby Hoffman, and Amy Landecker as her self-absorbed adult children — will be released late this month.)
Stillman has promised a brief six-episode season in case The Cosmopolitans is picked up and becomes part of our television renaissance. At the same time, the filmmaker is aware of the possible outcomes of Amazon’s TV gambit. As the auteur told Vanity Fair, “I’m very happy to have it as a pilot. I really feel that my IMDB page will look a little less pathetic.”
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