NAKED CITYL'eau-Life Films
It is difficult to avoid eulogy when talking of Paris. A simple walk across the Place de la Concorde on a bitter, resplendent Sunday morning in mid-winter is worth the thousand words which will ultimately fail to convey its melancholy. It is a city of devotion, not exclusively religious, and not necessarily a devotion driven by romance. How can one illustrate this?
In the north there is a triangle, the points of which are a church, a cemetery and a bar. When you leave behind you the sumptuous, almost Islamic, lines of elasticity which characterise Sacre-Coeur you rest your gaze upon the cemetery of Montmartre. This is not the last resting place of rock stars, nor is it a retreat for clandestine lovers. The dead who lie here designed the cultural fabric of the city - Hugo, Balzac - and visitors here are solemn and respectful. One visits the third point of the triangle later in the evening. Lily la Tigresse is the essence of urban vibrancy, a bar which exudes underbelly glamour. It attracts the young and the lonely, the true devotees to La Pigalle, driven like all of us by a tormented and vagabond curiosity.
This is Paris. The light which rests upon her crown escapes through a crack in the wall of heaven.
