Given the film's good-natured vibe, it really should come as no surprise that Catherine turns out to be more appealing than her sometimes bad cafe manners suggest. Thompson seems to be having some fun at the character's expense when Catherine amusingly blunders an introduction to a famous film director played by the famous film director Sydney Pollack. Pollack's character, Brian Sobinksi, is in Paris preparing an alarming-sounding new film about Simone de Beauvoir; the sultry sexpot Monica Bellucci, for one, is said to be up for the lead. Seated in the cafe that serves as the film's and the avenue's hub, he proves too busy to notice Catherine, who is on her way to rehearsals for a boulevard comedy by Feydeau.
The real Avenue Montaigne is on the Right Bank in a tony neighborhood near the Arc de Triomphe and far, geographically and otherwise, from the working-class suburbs that uneasily ring Paris. Like the film itself, the avenue is peopled by privileged, white Parisians whose lives seem untouched by the turmoil that has recently rocked the nation and dominated the news. It would be easy to dismiss the film for its lack of heft, for the deaf ear and blind eye it has apparently turned to the world, but only if you mistook this self-conscious fairy tale for a slice of realism or forgot about Jessica. Fauteuils d'orchestre is a bonbon, not a bouillabaisse. But because this is finally a film about desire, it carries a bittersweet tang.
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