Can a collegiate puppeteer find love as an au pair in Paris?
That’s the not-quite-burning question at the heart of “Goodbye, Petrushka,” an amiable but aimless romantic comedy that struggles to tie puppetry, filmmaking and figure skating together in a story of a coed’s first shots at love.
It’s an occasionally cute, strained attempt at twee that never quite comes together or comes off.
Lizzie Kehoe is Claire, a New York college filmmaker trying to make something out of her lifelong love of puppets. She’s got a self-impressed teacher who isn’t impressed with her. Any guy who refers to himself as “Professor Steve” (Dhane Ross) and eschews teaching his class about the great films and great filmmakers because he’d rather talk about “Professor Steve” is suspect.
Claire’s got a richer, prettier, dizzier friend (Casey Landman) who wants them to skip off to Paris for a semester or so. That’s not something Claire considers until she stumbles into the handsome Frenchman, Thibaut (Thomas Vieljeux). But his days in New York are ending, he says. Adieu!
Claire is instantly smitten and totally-obsessed. She had no idea he was a failed figure skater, having just gotten the “past your prime” and “I strongly advise you to end your career yourself” lecture from a skating federation chief. But some anxious Google searching and she’s all about Thibaut, or plans to be.
Claire, who speaks French and is flattered when he compliments her French, impulsively decides to go to Paris, become an au pair rather than split expenses with spendthrift friend Julia (Landman), get involved with the famous French puppetry school and make a film about them, with Thibaut, while she’s there.
Writer-director Nicola Rose has some fun with the French language and French snootiness (every “Your accent is terrible” French bureaucrat is played by Joëlle Haddad Champeyroux in a different wig), the traps and warnings Claire misses when the au pair recruiter “warns” (tricks) her about the nature of the job. And Rose takes a shot at faking a trip to Paris on an indie film budget.
But the film plays like “Hey, this guy can skate so let’s use it” in the strained ways it tries piece all this into a narrative, to add a figure skater to the film Claire wants to adapt from the story of “Petrushka.”
Claire’s crush on Thibaut seems headed nowhere, so she takes up with the first young Parisian (Bartek Szymanski) to flatter her accent, a detour that has a chuckle or two but nothing more.
The performances overall are more competent than compelling, affecting or particularly funny.
And for all this talk about puppets, some of whom we see, but never “in action,” the film has no idea of what to do with them. Claire’s fantasy sequences in which she can imagine the story she wants to tell or the romance with Thibaut she wishes she had are illustrated with drawn (CGI assisted) animation.
Why have a puppeteer and a story about puppets if you’re not going to use them as anything but an occasional sight gag? That’s a serious aesthetic and logical stumble in a movie that is already a little light on charm and very thin entertainment.
Rating: unrated, some scenes of a sexual nature
Cast: Lizzie Kehoe, Thomas Vieljeux, Casey Landman, Bartek Szymanski, Joëlle Haddad Champeyroux, Marine Assaiante and Dhane Ross
Credits: Scripted and directed by Nicola Rose. An IndieRights release on Tubi, Amazon, etc.
Running time: 1:40
