Romance in a Paris Cinema – a feelgood recipe for success?

The Secret Paris Cinema Club by Nicholas Barreau

Although I rarely read full-on romance novels, I couldn’t resist this one. It has all the feelgood ingredients one could ask for – an old cinema, a beautiful woman in a red coat, a classic boy meets girl/loses girl/finds girl (one hopes) romance – and it is set in Paris. Will this be a recipe for success?  Or just too cheesy?

Alain Bonnard is an old, but young romantic. He is the owner of a small arthouse cinema in Paris that he inherited from his beloved uncle. Working there is a labour of love, but Alain does love the Cinéma Paradis. He runs it as a traditional picturehouse showing no Hollywood blockbusters, there is no popcorn either.

Every Wednesday evening he shows a classic film about love – Les Amour au Paradis as he calls this slot in the cinema’s programme. Each week a beautiful woman in a red coat comes to watch the romantic movie and always sits in row 17.

Alain is talking about her with his best friend Robert…

“You mean to tell me that this girl you fancy so much has been coming to the cinema for four months and you still haven’t even spoken to her?” …
… I nodded again and thought back to the time the girl with the red coat had first appeared at the box office. I always called her ‘the girl,’ but in fact she was a young woman, somewhere around twenty-five to twenty-eight, with shoulder-length caramel hair, which she parted at the side, a delicate heart-shaped face with a scattering of freckles, and shiny dark eyes. To me, she always seemed a little lost – in her thoughts, or in the world – and had a habit of nervously tucking her hair behind her ear with her right hand as she waited for me to tear a ticket off for her. But when she smiled the whole place seemed to fill with light, and her expression became a bit roguish. And yes, she had a lovely mouth and wonderful teeth.

Eventually Alain plucks up courage, and he and Mélanie go out for a late supper after the film one night. At the end he walks her home and they kiss and agree to meet next week. Alain is head over heels in love, and it seems the feeling is reciprocated. In the classic romantic plot, Alain must now lose Mélanie and find her again after much angst and searching.

This is where the American indie film director Allan Wood (yes, you read it right, and yes, this is a very thinly disguised character based upon the celebrated American film director) comes in with the star of his next film, Solange Avril. They are looking for a location to film some cinema scenes. Solange used to come to the Cinéma Paradis as a girl, and Alain, once approached can only say yes – it’ll be a huge financial boost for him.

He finds himself invited to dinner with Wood and Solange, and whilst having a post-prandial cigarette outside with the actress who is ‘available’ – he turns her down – she does a Gallic shrug and puts her arm through his, when Flash! the paparazzi are there, and he finds himself on the front pages of the tabloids touted as Solange’s new boyfriend. Naturally Mélanie doesn’t turn up the next week. What is Alain to do?

There will be complications and twists aplenty for Alain in his journey to regain his new love, aided and abetted by Wood and Solange.

I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book – and yes it was incredibly cheesy – which rather added to its allure.  The character of Allan Wood was funny and irritating in his transparent characterisation at the same time – but he spouted plenty of Allen-esque lines that made me smile…  Solange and Mélanie were just too good to be true, but you did want the lovelorn Alain to win her back. It was the perfect light-hearted palate-cleanser after getting stuck into the heavyweight literary novels I’d been reading before.

Then I went to look up the author, as he has written another novel – The Ingredients of Love, and the mystery deepens. Nicholas Barreau, so the blurb goes, is an acclaimed Parisian writer of mixed parentage who went to the Sorbonne, and worked in a bookshop on the Rive Gauche – but his name is a pseudonym and his identity is known only by his editor.

Another reclusive author like Elena Ferrante…  but, it seems, the truth is not so romantic – and it has put me off wanting to read the other book. Outed in Germany, Barreau is apparently a collective pseudonym for a series of authors writing romances to order to meet market preferences – just like the Daisy Meadows fairy books for little girls.

I must admit that I feel a bit cheated by that discovery, but it hasn’t dampened my enthusiasm for this particular book – whomever its real author is – it was great page-turning fun! (7.5/10)

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Source: Publisher – Thank you!

To explore further on Amazon UK, please click below:
The Secret Paris Cinema Clubby Nicholas Barreau, pub September 2014 by Quercus, 336 pages, paperback original.

8 thoughts on “Romance in a Paris Cinema – a feelgood recipe for success?

  1. kaggsysbookishramblings says:

    Sounds like a fun light read, which sometimes we just need. Like you, however, I’d be a bit put off knowing it’s been written by one of a group of anonymous writers!

    • Annabel (gaskella) says:

      I was in two minds whether to include the bit about the author – but this edition doesn’t mention a translator at all either – and some ferreting around finds a English/German one, so it’s not French at all but German!

      • kaggsysbookishramblings says:

        I think it’s relevant and definitely worth including – I’d want to know stuff like this as a reader!

  2. Ellie (Storybook Girl) says:

    Oh, this sounds like such a sweet read! While it’s not the type of book that I usually go for sometimes you just can’t beat a little bit of cheesy fiction, haha! Thank you for sharing your review 🙂 xx

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