A real-time, real-life fantasy in Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau's fantastical variation on reality. This is the stuff of dreams - wet dreams, perhaps - but it's as real as it is rarefied. Love at first fuck spirals into a moment-by-moment depiction of the infancy of a relationship, frenzied and passionate in its intimacy and its (literally gay) abandon, tentative and edgy in its play with the limits of caution. Banal, uncouth, functional modern life imposes upon the couple restrictions commensurate to the flexibilities it extends to the individual; there's that reality, not only bearing down upon Theo and Hugo's fanciful hope for happiness but already attempting to negate it before its own inception - in thought and in actuality both, their encounter carries the distinct timbre of foolish recklessness. It's too good to be true, surely, but there it is: it's too good! Too good to turn down too. And just as these early stages in a romance are informed by little other than romance itself, Paris 05:59 indulges us as its protagonists indulge one another. Its images are constrained by the conditions of its premise, though Ducastel and Martineau's adherence to real-time restraints mostly only amplifies the integrity of the film's emotional content, showing the audience a picture in full, if only for an hour and a half, rather than mere excerpts. Otherwise, this is a film full of elative moments, swoony adventures through the possible beginnings of love in none other than the 'City of Love.' Sensual, charming, and disarmingly poignant in the intensity of the mood it captures with such remarkable faith, this is a real-life fantasy that I really enjoyed.
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