“Paul and Paulette Take A Bath”, interview with the director Jethro Massey and the actors Marie Benati and Jérémie Galiana

September 6, 2024

Jethro Massey, director, Marie Benati and Jérémie Galiana, actors, "Paul and Paulette Take A Bath". An unconentional love story, a taste for the macabre in history, a quirky funny film.

"Paul and Paulette Take A Bath", interview with the director Jethro Massey and the actors Marie Benati and Jérémie Galiana Angelo Acerbi

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Jethro Massey brings his film “Paul and Paulette Take A Bath” to the Venice International Film Festival, in the Critics’s Week competition. The film stars Marie Benati and Jérémie Galiana as a young couple that meets in Paris and is attracted to history and the more macabre aspects of it. We met director and actors after the premiere of the film to know more about it.

Everything started from a photograph

Jethro Massey has been fascinated by the famous Lee Miller self portrait she made inside Hitler’s bathtub, after he committed suicide. This was the germ for “Paul and Paulette Take A Bath”, a story about the dar moments of history and the weird fascination they have on us.

From Marie Antoinette to Bataclan

Jethro Massey in “Paul and Paulette Take A Bath” touches all famous and dark characters and moments of history, down to the Bataclan massacre. In this case, though, he changes tone and approach, as both Jérémie Galiana and Marie Benati explain.

Plot

A twisted romantic comedy about a young American photographer and a French girl with a taste for the macabre. Paul & Paulette’s chance encounter on a Parisian boulevard sparks an unusual friendship that grows around a dark game; reenacting scenes of notorious crimes from bygone eras at the sites they occurred. For Paul, the game is a way of getting closer to Paulette. For Paulette, it’s a way of escaping a painful break-up with her girlfriend, and of processing her own inherited trauma. As their morbid road trip approaches the more recent past it becomes more uncomfortable, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy, but finding a surprising joy in the darker corners of humanity.

Written by: Angelo Acerbi

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Paul and Paulette take a bath

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Mostra del Cinema di Venezia

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“Paul and Paulette Take A Bath”, interview with the director Jethro Massey and the actors Marie Benati and Jérémie Galiana