"AT FIRST GLANCE" A SCREENPLAY FOR A MUSICAL MOVIE

 

First of all, "At first glance" is a musical that takes off on an exuberant songanddance journey through a lifechanging love affair between Matthew and Isabelle. This screenplay was born from my real encounter and and my imagination immediately grabbed on to my true story. I couldn’t get the idea of a screenplay out of my mind, and I knew that one day, I would write my story. At once this screenplay is an ode to the glamour and emotion of cinema classics, a love letter of unabated dreams, and a distinctly modern romance. Madeline is a young French-american woman, who has a lovely shoes boutique in Paris. On the surface, she leads a very orderly life, and has just gotten engaged to her boyfriend, Raphael. However, behind this harmonious facade, Isabelle hides an exuberant and romantic personality. She firmly believed her life was ready for good, until she met Matthew. He is a real artist, who owned one of the most prestigious bistro in Paris. Matthew shares a flat with his friend Marcus, an eccentric and phlegmatic man who brings a touch of colour to his life. I thoroughly enjoyed researching the world of fine dining. I can see all the things my creative process as a screenplay writer has in common with that of certain chefs: the desire to reinvent yourself, the search for originality, while respecting certain traditions, as well as the constant fear of not delivering work that gives pleasure and satisfaction. One day, in JFK airport waiting room, Matthew and Isabelle collide. They throw each other disapproving words and move on. Two strangers, one moment of distraction and two destinies changed for good. Normally, each of them would mind their own paths and lives. But when they reach the destination, Paris, they discover that they changed phones by mistake. And there and then begins the magic . Isabelle and Matthew,  who are a few kilometers away from each other – both are in Paris – start to investigate those magic devices that fell into their hands. Although they had intended to return the phones, they are taken over by curiosity as they discover each other’s secrets, tied up in some sort of mystery. Let’s look objectively at what we save in our phones: smartphones are so much more than a diary, they save our conversations, our arguments, the things we love. They are charmed objects, an extension of ourselves, an archive of our personal lives, through pictures, videos and emails. Beyond this sociological theme, this technological progression is also an endless source of dramatic tension for me: it allows me to easily make characters meet, speed up the pace of our storytelling, creating new twists and new conflicts. Mostly, the mutual discovery of their secrets mirrors all too well the gridlock Isabelle and Matthew are each navigating in their lives. Both are focused on the kind of nearimpossible hopes that are the lifeblood of Paris: Sebastian trying to get people to care about traditional cuisine in the 21 st Century, Mia aiming to nail just one extraordinary fashion show of shoes and, especially, of boots. But neither expects that their fateful encounter will lead them to take leaps they never could alone. The leaps they both make, towards each other and, conflictingly, into their grandest artistic dreams, create s its own quintessentially cinematic world of rapture in At first glance – one that with light, color, sound, music and words takes a trip directly into the ecstasies of the happiness we chase and the heartache of the passions we never get over. Wearing its influences on its sleeve, At first glance allows me to pay homage to legends of cinema while harnessing its current power to make the most private human terrain – the territory of intimate relationships, personal dreams and the crossroads where decisions set fate into motion – come to life on the screen as a palpably real, yet enchanted, universe. To me, it was important to make amovie about about two people who have these giant dreams that drive them, that bring them together, but also tear them apart. At first glance is a very different screenplay from the others I wrote in many ways. At first glance deals with something that's really personal to me: how you balance life and art, how you balance reality and dreams and also, specifically, how you balance your relationship to your art with your relationships with other people. With At first glance , I wanted to tell that story using music, song and dance. I think the musical as a genre is a great vehicle for expressing that balancing act between dreams and reality. The components of the screenplay might be ageless, but my approach is novel. I tried to reinvigorate the genre by drawing on classic elements, but bringing them forth in a way that speaks to contemporary life. I dreamed the foundation of great old movies into something for a new generation. Indeed, exactly the idea of writing not just a musical, but a musical that is about the realities of love and dreams in today’s Paris, energized me and, so, I wanted to write a screenplay that channels the magic and energy of the most poignantly romantic French and American musicals of filmmaking’s Golden Age into our more complicated and jaded age. For as dizzyingly fast as our world has changed in the last half century, are we any less captive to the whimsies of accidental meetings or missed opportunities, of dreams hitting roadblocks or dreams coming true, of knowing pure, mad love or watching as the demands of the world change our purest connections? I just wondered if songand-dance storytelling could again bring audiences solace, joy and enduring fairy tales, even in the world. With At forst glance , I wanted to do a love story and I also wanted to create a musical like the musicals that entranced me as a kid, but updated into something very modern. I wanted to explore how you use songs, dances and all these very expressionistic elements of Classic School movie making to tell a story that takes place in our times. Throughout At first glance , you have a very contemporary aesthetic. There is a screenplay that lets you feel like you are very much in the moment, while taking you back to the era of Golden Hollywood entertainment. That aesthetic had its roots in my lifelong love of movies. In terms of his more classic influences, I was uniquely inspired by An American in Paris and The Band Wagon by Vincente Minnelli and Singin’ in the Rain and Funny Face by Stanley Donen. Minnelli’s and Donen’s probably the biggest influences on this screenplay. There are no more formative movies for me than An American in Paris and Singin’ in the Rain . That’s a profound love that I’ve had, Besides, I was, also, inspired by the films of Jacques Demy, the French New Wave director who broke the hyperserious 1960s mold with intoxicating, candycolored musicals such as The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort. So, I became struck by the idea of fusing some of his favorite elements from musicals of the 40s, 50s and 60s – the classic musical score, the passiondriven dances – with the city, Paris, which becomes as much a romantic character in At first glance as the screenplay’s two lovers. Paris has been many things on films, but I set out to explore the city as a widescreen city, as a constantly inmotion canvas of fateful encounters, endless traffic, but also endless striving as everyone chases their own dreams. So I thought it would be great to write about shooting the film in widescreen, to make it as a big and spectacular to me as a classic Hollywood musical. set the film’s opening music number (on the wings of the music of the song Begin the Beguine by Cole Porter) in Isabelle's apartment for very clear reasons. Nowadays, in the great cities, you mostly have apartments with one or two people in them. It's part of what makes the city feel a bit lonely. But it’s also reflects how Paris is a crazy haven for dreamers. Because when you're in your home what are you doing? You're playing music, or you’re dreaming music. Each dreamer has their own dream; each person is living their own song. You're in your own bubble universe, your own living musical. So that is why that moment is the perfect one for two dreamers like Matthew and Isabelle to meet. I use the the moment when Isabelle arranged her hair – covering her right eye Veronica Lake fashion – in the mirror, to create a tapestry of music that everyone, one by one, joins into at the moment. Therefore, At first glance ’s Paris is also a city of yearning, as has been described in Billy Wilder's classic "Sabrina". So, my screenplay is absolutely a love letter to the Hollywood cinema and I hope with all my heart and soul that it becomes, one day, a real musical movie, a cinemascope and technicolor romance told through songanddance, like the musicals from the 30s to the 50s. This love for Hollywood cinema and, especially, for musical are what ledtowards At first glance . While I was writing my screenplay, in my mind, in my heart, Isabelle he and Matthew have always talked to each other in rhythm and melody. Their relationship has always been expressed in music and songs like those of George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter have always been my ideal soundtrack. But At first glance not want to be just a screenplay, a love story. At first glance want to be the story that teaches us – in a cinematographic way – that everything that happens to us, happens for a reason. So, to Antonella, to the Muse that inspired me, to whom my screenplay is dedicated, I want to write a huge Thanks you . If my screenplay begins its journey into the world is on her own.

 

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