April brought me another visitor from Turku. We had planned to see the Paris in films: places that feature in some of our favourite movies. Maybe the most obvious thing was to look for the stairs that can get you to another era when sitting on them at midnight (Midnight in Paris). Turns out, we weren’t the only ones with this idea – indeed, we could easily find on the internet that it’s the staircase of the church next to the Panthéon. (There are many photos online so I wont include my sad one.)

The time was right for this particular girl to arrive; she seems to have an instinct for spotting cherry blossoms. I recently also learned that the city of Turku had planted cherry trees in the centre – I think I missed them, but now I know to look for them!

But really, looking for places where they’ve shot a film in Paris is not so difficult. After that I’ve seen a couple of new French films that take place intirely on these small streets, recognising some of them immediately. Not to mention places that should be taken on film.

What was most the coolest thing though – one day, I walked down the street from our apartment, was stopped by a man asking me to wait because they were about to shoot a scene, and I got to know they were making the new Michel Gondry film! (coming out next year and called l’Écume des jours.) 

So I was more than happy to wait and tried to of course catch all the action. In fact, it was the actor Romain Duris (who I’m guessing represented the French male ideal to my high school teacher) driving in a funny colourful car into a set full of stuff that looked exactly like it belonged to a Gondry film. Among them, more colourful cars, and I pretty much felt like I was in one for the rest of the day.