Une sirène à Paris

Gaspard might live in the City of Lights, but little of it brightens his gloomy soul. He’s a cabaret singer in his family’s dingy little Parisian nightclub, but its gaudy colours and shabby approximation of glamour cannot dispel his perennial sense of disappointment, nor his heartbreak and subsequent certainty that love is an impossibility. Perhaps, or maybe it’s as unlikely as coming across an unconscious mermaid one night, beached on a dimly lit quay of the Seine. He takes her to the hospital, but that proves… unsuccessful. The second option is the bathtub in his little apartment, where he tends to the wound he spots on her in. The next morning, Lula, as she calls herself, is awake – and surprised that her thoughtful rescuer is still alive. (Fantasia International Film Festival)