Barely are there any directors who have been able to resist the charm of setting a warm, romantic story in Paris. Nicola Rose is no exception. Goodbye, Petrushka (2022) takes us back to the city of dreams and love as we find our protagonist struggling to make sense of her adult life and romances. If you are in the mood for a simple, sweet film that will leave you smiling, this should be the one you watch.
Claire (played by Lizzie Kehoe) is a film school student living in New York. She wants to blend her lifelong interest in puppets with the art of movie-making, a passion that no one – including her professor and classmates – can seem to fathom. On the other hand, Thibault (played by Thomas Vieljeux) is a skating star whose glory in the said field seems to be reduced with age, so he quits figure skating and takes up a job at a bank.
Quite impulsively, Claire decides to quit her New York life and education, withdraw her funds from film school, and book a one-way ticket to Paris, France. She secretly hopes the new city will push her to get her life in order. Besides, she meets Thibault in New York and quickly gets attracted to him.
So, she takes up the job of a nanny via an agency in Paris, tags along with her annoying wealthy friend, Julia (played by Casey Landman), and lands in Paris to give wings to her dreams and make a sizzling romance out of her attraction towards Thibault. The latter is actually creepy! However, life clearly has other plans for Claire, who is met by a series of constant struggles and disappointments, including the fact that Thibault has a ballet dancer girlfriend.
Claire still manages to collaborate with Thibault on her dream project, one that will combine puppetry and figure skating to enact the story of Petrushka, a lovesick Russian puppet whose story she learns at a local bookstore. Thibault plays the leading man in this project but is consistently confused about risking his 9-5 job to embrace his passion that the world believes he is too old for. Will Claire finally see her dreams taking shape? Goodbye, Petrushka (2022) presents you with oddball moments of laughter and displays the clamoring energy of a young adult embracing life as it happens.
Unlike most movies in this genre, showing us how protagonists have that one true best friend they can confide in, Claire is surrounded by an obnoxious, self-obsessed friend. I must admit it is a fresh change, and the idea here is to portray that Claire is all on her own in life; it is a bittersweet realization.
Furthermore, Claire may be discreetly, or not so discreetly, pining for Thibault. But she is in a situationship with another puppeteer she first met when she landed in Paris, Rafal. These fresh additions to the genre make Goodbye, Petrushka (2022) refreshing to watch. I must, however, complain about the lack of chemistry between Kehoe’s and Vieljeux’s characters, which is a letdown to the air of Parisian romance that the film is building up to.
The film also satirizes the Parisian culture in the process. There is an elaborate episode in the movie where Claire is shuttling between two reception desks because the receptionists keep telling her off due to her French accent. Further, the nosy, racist world of elite Parisian families employing house help is also laid bare through Claire’s experience as a nanny here. As you must have figured out already, so many things have been stuffed into the screenplay, including an elaborate animation short, that they ultimately make the screenplay too bloated to keep you hooked.
Perhaps I would have liked Goodbye, Petrushka (2022) a lot more if Rose chose to pull the cameras away from the faces of the characters and allowed us to bask in the mellow light of Paris. It is a little too uptight and self-serious as a feature, but I appreciate the effort to display the chaos of adulting and coming-of-age in love and life. I would not be astonished if this movie makes you want to indulge in a Paris trip!
