Chapter 28 Go for a Coffee in the Bastille: Everyone Looks for a Cat, 1996

Go for a Coffee in the Bastille: Everyone Looks for a Cat, 1996 Everyday atmosphere is getting harder and harder to find in popular movies. It seems that we are all living in the age of light and magic, and emotion has become a cheap additive among flying machines, guns and shape-shifting monsters.Now on the screen, we can only see a kind of "great lover", but not those "low affection"--in fact, what happens around us is always the humble love and hate, some trivial troubles and hapiness.Whose camera viewfinder would these show up?Cedric Klapisch - one of the most popular French directors since the 1990s.His comedies may not be regarded as comedies in the eyes of audiences accustomed to Hollywood visual blockbusters, and it may not be known that they may be regarded as dull films, but his works always make people smile at the last moment.Such as this "everyone looking for a cat" (chacuncherchesonchat).

A tall woman wanted to go on a trip, but no one was willing to take care of her black cat. Finally, she beat around the bush and found an old lady who took care of cats.But when she came back, the old lady lost the cat.Those neighbors who were unwilling to take care of the cats for her mobilized one after another, posted notices for her, found acquaintances in the Animal Association, and even went to the streets to ask one by one... The process of looking for cats was flat but warm. People in the whole area saw the lost cats Every woman will kindly ask the last sentence.In this movie, we see Paris and Parisians as they really are, not the glamorous fashion capital or the filtered, historically imagined nostalgic city of "Emily the Angel."The population here is complex, the streets are full of Latin-style music, noisy and chaotic, and the streets are full of graffiti.This is the Bastille district of Paris.

In "Everybody Looks for a Cat", the Bastille district is where the city's petty citizens live.The open-air square here moves the rural market to the center of the fast lane of the city. It is called "the construction of the social aspect and the substantive aspect", where people line up, shop, and find their goals.The figure of the heroine of the movie also appears in the crowd from time to time, shuttling around.These simple market buildings allow us to see a side of life. It is said that most of the stalls here have been passed down from generation to generation, and they only operate thanks to the vitality and wit of merchants and customers.In fact, this "energy and wit" permeates the film intact.So when the film was released outside of France, many tourists came to sit in the open-air cafes in this "high atmosphere" neighborhood and feel the daily atmosphere of Paris.Interestingly, the old lady in the film introduced shrewdly, "The coffee at that shop is too expensive, it costs 10 francs a cup, and the one on the corner only costs 4 francs, but the taste is the same."

Director Klapic gave this film a unique vitality, so ordinary but vivid.The heroine lives with a cat and a gay boy. She has never met a suitable boyfriend. The job of a makeup artist assistant is to be manipulated, so unsatisfactory and so lonely.At the end of the film, a neighbor of a painter is moving away, and everyone goes to help. There is a farewell song in the tavern on the street, singing "Paris, the queen of the world; Paris, the blonde; Nose, slightly mocking..."Actually, this Paris does not have any beautifying meaning anymore, but the place where they live contains all kinds of unhappiness, annoying drums in the next door, dusty demolition actions on the street, everywhere. Graffiti and bums... our heroine laughs at the last moment and gallops through the streets of the Bastille.Life is so sad, but always filled with a kind of happiness.