Emily in Paris Season 4 – Part 2: Review

Advertisemen

Emily in Paris Season 4 – Part 2: Review, In the final segment of the fourth season, ‘Emily in Paris’ dynamically opens up to new geographies, without however chiseling new imaginaries or digging new internal routes: Emily, neo-Audrey Hepburn, clings on a Vespa to an Italian who is naturally still attached to her mother's skirts. The screenwriters don't ask themselves what moves their heroine, but they make her speed off anyway. But towards what destination?

Emily in Paris 4 – Part 2: from Paris to Rome, between old and new loves, Emily and her family move a lot, but they don't go anywhere

Netflix, as we know, is an outlet that doesn't mince words. It makes its products available on the shelf and almost doesn't care: they will do well or they will do badly; the algorithm decides, except in rare cases, like Baby Reindeer, in which word of mouth or critical intervention have the opportunity to determine the success of something of value. If a show is therefore divided into two parts, as Bridgerton and now Emily in Paris, it is an unmistakable sign that it is one of those that are expected to be talked about, for better or worse, one of those on which everything is bet to increase hype and (therefore) economic profit.

The wait for this final part of the fourth season has been whipped up by the whip of advertising frenzy and by some fragments leaked with such clever calculation that they would tempt even the most astute: we knew that Emily would somehow end up in Rome (and its surroundings) to imitate Audrey Hepburn, who Lily Collins vaguely recalls in her candid complexion and bone-sharp silhouette, and in fact we were anxious to see her as a tourist hostage of wonder for the Belpaese. Belpaese that we feared were already embalmed in a series of stereotypes: the blinding sun, the succulent food, the noisy chatter, the family always and in any case master of the emotional space, with the inevitable protagonism of a mother-matriarch who, however affectionate and eager to do good for her son, does not fail to crush him with her monumental presence. Imagination has not been denied by the facts: in addition to the Parisian brand, the second chapter of Emily in Paris 4 promotes the Italian lifestyle, celebrating the less decadent, and therefore more harmless, version of the dolce vita. Or rather, a variant of it that is now much more Instagrammable: the slow life.

Emily moves a lot in the five final episodes of the season, more than she has ever done before, but it is a surface dynamism, a stagnation masked by its opposite: she and her companions in adventure move with great speed from one vicissitude to another. They do things, they see people, Nanni Nanni Moretti would say. They change pace, accelerating continuously: they advance or retreat, this is not the point, nor is it a merry-go-round, a going around the void. Simply put, what is shown to us according to a very sustained rhythm of amorous (or pseudo-such) changes and existential (or pseudo-such) events never finds a correspondence in a psychic maturation that, reliably, would justify the change or the event mentioned above: it seems that the characters, like puppets, are moved by the action of a superior hand and not by a choice or a desire of their own, by an internal drive, deliberative or deliberate (unconsciously) as you like. Emily in Paris immerses us in a comic book atmosphere, in horizontal space, on which events slide in close succession, chronologically progressive – although with some oversights, such as the belly of Camille, supposedly pregnant, which never grows – but emotionally incoherent, and in a flat time, devoid of dimension, which does not determine any resonance in the psyche of the subjects, and instead only accumulates indeterminate vicissitudes, compelled by an arbitrary and accumulating deus ex machina.

Emily in Paris 4 – part 2: evaluation and conclusion

Emily, after a false start in Chicago and a false start on a ski slope, finally sets off for real, to chase a new man in Italy – not coincidentally a polo player – for whom she apparently falls in love without too much dizziness: “the Italian stallion”, as Mindy calls him, who in truth has very little of a stallion. Played by Eugenio Franceschini, the only happy choice within the otherwise not very successful Italian component of the cast, starting with the wooden Bova and the whiny Galiena, the character of Marcello rewrites the cliché of the slightly sly Italian gentleman, sacrificing sexual impetuosity – Italians do it better doesn’t even work as an ad anymore – for a more discreet, almost hipster charm, which finds its calling card in a sly and vaguely mischievous look. In the second act of the story, however, what had already clearly emerged in the first appears confirmed: eros does not belong to the younger characters of the series, all awkward, inhibited, or taken by other things, between sentimental indecision, slowed emotionality and relational burdens that they do not dare to get rid of.

Their de-eroticized existence saddens, but, on the other hand, Sylvie herself, the much-celebrated incarnation of self-confident, uninhibited femininity, freed from sexual inhibitions, seems to us, in this final line of the scenic story, more than ever sterilely enslaved by her character of a sixty-year-old who only needs a wink to take what she wants. Behind her Don Juan-like behavior, perhaps there is an act of strength, a desire for control, and the determination to escape from feelings. It would be interesting if the dimension of fear ‘corrected’ or revealed by the character’s boldness were explored in depth, and used for dramaturgical purposes, but, needless to say, this does not happen. Seeing her in the arms of her Italian lover, played by a flabby Raoul Bova with zero sex appeal, arouses more pity than satisfaction. The characters we have come to know during the serial representation, to which the new generations are now added, are never investigated in their subjective traits or feelings, but function as caricatures, figurines without interiority or aborted in their psychologies, silhouettes that lend themselves to the development of the plot without participating in it, in a strangeness that is both entertaining – in the sense that it distracts – and disturbing. Once the viewing is over, one wonders if the episodes seen were a succession of reels imported from TikTok: everything proceeds too quickly, without a hint of dimensionality or personal interpretation, of subjectivization of the experienced fact.

There is a notable difference between the lightness, even a little frivolous, and the emptiness of a dramatic discourse, and perhaps the authors of Emily in Paris can no longer be absolved of responsibility by attributing to them a refined disengagement. Emily in Paris is no longer satisfied with simply packaging and slicking up some good intuitions of themes or characters, but it is necessary to request for the next season – the end of the fourth season is wide open, so there will be a crystalline certainty – a greater availability to writing the characters, their motives, and their movements, not only external but also and above all internal. We hope that the budget that the producers have allocated to advertising will be allocated elsewhere, perhaps to finance the work of the screenwriters: even in a product that is born to be of mere consumption, a soul is needed. Which is then a vital breath, air that circulates, an unpredictable and unexpected glimpse into some deep or superficial truth, deep because superficial, a dart in choppy water. A dive that interrupts the prolonged floating in expanses that would be worth muddying a bit, rippling with less inoffensive trajectories.

Review TV Series