Playlist

Nine Antico’s debut fea­ture opens with black-and-white shots from with­in a wag­on on the Paris Métro Line 3bis arriv­ing at the Saint Fargeau sta­tion. The cam­era almost appears to be peo­ple watch­ing, which is the most excit­ing activ­i­ty you can par­tic­i­pate in when rid­ing the Paris Métro.

Vocals from Daniel Johnston’s ​‘True Love Will Find You in the End’ traipse across the shot, paired with the deep voice of a melan­choly French man who begins his film-long nar­ra­tion, ​“As chil­dren, life looked like a long expanse of love […] It turned out things would not be so simple.”

Final­ly, the shot iso­lates its prime sub­ject, lin­ger­ing on our pro­tag­o­nist, Sophie (Sara Foresti­er), whose place I have been in too many times before, lean­ing against the car­riage door as she wit­ness­es a brawl between two men, one head­but­ting the oth­er before mak­ing his escape when the train screech­es to a halt.

It is clear from the out­set that Playlist is work­ing towards more of a char­ac­ter study than a high-stakes dra­ma. Sophie starts out as a wait­ress in her late twen­ties with lit­tle prospect of a career tied to her true pas­sion: art. Beyond her ennui in her pro­fes­sion­al life, Sophie also feels unful­filled in her love life, rather in line with the ham­my eulo­gy for romance that the nar­ra­tor has been drag­ging on from the begin­ning; her co-work­er Jean (Pierre Lot­tin), who she has been sleep­ing with, rather blunt­ly con­fess­es that he is in love with her when she tells him she is preg­nant with his baby.

This sequence plays out in a bor­der­line comedic fash­ion, kick­ing off a domi­no effect of unfor­tu­nate events that just sort of hap­pen to Sophie, where­as she would much rather be the one affect­ing the world around her. Her luck begins to change, if only for a short while, when she is hired at a pres­ti­gious graph­ic nov­el pub­lish­ing house on min­i­mum wage, with a self-pro­claimed ​“ass­hole” for a boss.

Playlist is noth­ing if not styl­ish, rem­i­nis­cent of Noah Baumbach’s indie dar­ling Frances Ha, its focus being a mil­len­ni­al woman who absolute­ly does not have her shit togeth­er. Antico’s film is messy in oth­er, unin­tend­ed ways, how­ev­er, and its strength is under­mined by a mis­guid­ed desire to turn it into a rom-com.

Despite its title, the film’s use of music is sur­pris­ing­ly unin­spired, as the sound­track is tied to the nar­ra­tive through cod­ed moments: for exam­ple, the afore­men­tioned track is repeat­ed when­ev­er we are led to believe that Sophie is think­ing about love. Or, per­haps she is roman­ti­cis­ing a life that is not hers through the poten­tial suit­ors that she comes across (some more seri­ous than others).

Mis­guid­ed, wan­der­ing, and search­ing for a pur­pose, Sophie spends the remain­der of the film look­ing for answers. The dénoue­ment, how­ev­er, is not ful­fill­ing for her or the audi­ence, sac­ri­fic­ing a poten­tial emo­tion­al break­through for the story’s weak under­cur­rent of a quest for love.