Paris Can Wait

[projekktor id=’28148′]

Eleanor Coppola makes her narrative feature film directorial debut with Paris Can Wait. The film stars Diane Lane, Alec Baldwin, and Arnaud Viard.

Anne (Lane) is at a crossroads in her life. Long married to a successfully driven but inattentive movie producer (Baldwin), she finds herself taking a car trip from Cannes to Paris with a business associate of her husband (Viard). What should be a seven-hour drive turns into a journey of discovery involving picturesque sights, fine food and wine, humor, wisdom, and much more.

Having already filmed several documentaries, Coppola had to change her mindset to shoot the drama. “The process of making a fiction film is exactly the opposite of a documentary. For a documentary, you have to be very quiet and observant, look for moments when something interesting might happen, and hope you have your camera turned on and in focus when it does. A fiction film is just the opposite. You have to decide how everything will happen and this was difficult, being by nature an observer of what is ‘already there.’”

Luckily she had a talented team backing her up during production in France. “I felt totally supported by my French production company and my crew, especially since I don’t speak the language. As much as possible, I tried to include my favorite picturesque sites. Some of the locations were determined by logistics, and at times we had to find substitutes for the actual places I had in mind.”

Paris Can Wait is rated PG.