This is not (much of) a review of L'Important C'est d'Aimer. This will be (mostly) me bragging about the fact that I've been living in this film's "apartment" space for the last 3½ years. Sorry in advance. But when am I going to be able to tell a story like this ever again?
(I'm moving out this week, so I'm not worried about doxxing my family or anything.)
They shot this half a century ago now (woof); the building has since been chopped up into apartments, and they've moved the stairs around, but the exteriors & front door lobby area, including the ornate ironwork on the glass doors, have very much not changed. There are even still roses in the front yard. We've planted more!
(It's on a villa street, behind a coded gate, which sounds swanky, but there's a lot of young families & immigrant types in this mini-neighborhood, which makes the place a lot more livable.)
The big open room where Jacques keeps all his vintage photos (where the poster was shot) used to be the apartment of the Iranian Ambassador to France. That room used to have a throne in it, in case the Shah ever came. (He apparently never did.)
The whole building was built in 1905 as a gift from some architect for his sculptor friend. It's good to have friends, I guess. But that means our living room window is absolutely huge, and lets in an impressive amount of sunlight. Sleeping in in this place takes a concerted effort.
When our landlord walked us through the place when we first moved in, he mentioned this film just in passing, but he immediately apologized for it. "I'm so sorry. They shot a terrible, terrible film here."
He was wrong. Yes, it's trashy and histrionic and over the top, and Klaus Kinski is just jibbering, possibly without a script, for much of the film, and there's a disturbing amount of scruffy, sweaty guys wearing coats with no shirt underneath, but Romy Schneider really leaves it all out there, Fabio Testi is all brooding jawline and supertight jeans, and Zulawsky trusts you to figure out the bonkers plot as it goes. If you like giallo-adjacent 70s melodrama with plenty of nekkidity and bloody makeup sprinkled throughout, you'll dig it.
But me, I'll watch it for nostalgia reasons. This will be the first place my now-6-year-old will ever remember living, and his first watch of this -- maybe next week! -- will be a foundational moment in his life. I can't wait.
This is not (much of) a review of L'Important C'est d'Aimer. This will be (mostly) me bragging about the fact that I've been living in this film's "apartment" space for the last 3½ years. Sorry in advance. But when am I going to be able to tell a story like this ever again?
(I'm moving out this week, so I'm not worried about doxxing my family or anything.)
They shot this half a century ago now (woof); the building has since been chopped up into apartments, and they've moved the stairs around, but the exteriors & front door lobby area, including the ornate ironwork on the glass doors, have very much not changed. There are even still roses in the front yard. We've planted more!
(It's on a villa street, behind a coded gate, which sounds swanky, but there's a lot of young families & immigrant types in this mini-neighborhood, which makes the place a lot more livable.)
The big open room where Jacques keeps all his vintage photos (where the poster was shot) used to be the apartment of the Iranian Ambassador to France. That room used to have a throne in it, in case the Shah ever came. (He apparently never did.)
The whole building was built in 1905 as a gift from some architect for his sculptor friend. It's good to have friends, I guess. But that means our living room window is absolutely huge, and lets in an impressive amount of sunlight. Sleeping in in this place takes a concerted effort.
When our landlord walked us through the place when we first moved in, he mentioned this film just in passing, but he immediately apologized for it. "I'm so sorry. They shot a terrible, terrible film here."
He was wrong. Yes, it's trashy and histrionic and over the top, and Klaus Kinski is just jibbering, possibly without a script, for much of the film, and there's a disturbing amount of scruffy, sweaty guys wearing coats with no shirt underneath, but Romy Schneider really leaves it all out there, Fabio Testi is all brooding jawline and supertight jeans, and Zulawsky trusts you to figure out the bonkers plot as it goes. If you like giallo-adjacent 70s melodrama with plenty of nekkidity and bloody makeup sprinkled throughout, you'll dig it.
But me, I'll watch it for nostalgia reasons. This will be the first place my now-6-year-old will ever remember living, and his first watch of this -- maybe next week! -- will be a foundational moment in his life. I can't wait.
