L’Appartement: Wicker Park, gone French

Last week I half-heartedly – in the course of my Netflix Watch Instantly browsing – and completely by chance, started watching the french film L’Appartment. Imagine my tickled surprise when, about three minutes in, I realized that the uncanny resemblance it held to the 2004 American film Wicker Park couldn’t be an accident. Sure enough, a quick Wikipedia confirmed that Wicker Park (Josh Hartnett, Diane Kruger, Rose Byrne) was based on the 1996 film starring the Vincent Cassel (known in America for Eastern Promises and the Ocean’s X stuff) and Monica Belucci (The Passion of the Christ, Matrix: Reloaded, Shoot ‘Em Up). As a lover of Wicker Park both for its incredible soundtrack, as well as its eerie ambience, I committed to L’appartement, eager to discover if the original  would stay true to the parts of Wicker Park I knew and loved, while tightening up some of the pieces that have always left me uneasy, confused, and just downright angry. L’Appartement makes more sense, I’ll give it that. The ending is less ‘Hollywood’, and has a nice mixture of cathartic closure and bizarre twists. And while I love the precious slow-motion finale scene from 2004 of Josh Hartnett chasing through the airport for Lisa while Coldplay’s The Scientist rings in the background, I must admit that it defeated the purpose of all the unexpected empathy that the film up until then seemed to be collecting for the Lisa-rival character. The French film resolved that better. Also, Daniel, a character whose role I never fully understood in the American version, enters the film again in the French version and makes him seem less like the confusing tack-on character he was in the 2004 film. I remember watching Wicker Park in the theater in 2004. Days later, after getting over the thrill of the soundtrack (Strange and Beautiful by Aqualung, We Have a Map of the Piano by Múm, and an incredible cover of The Scientist by Danny Lohner and Johnette Napolitano) I realized that although I loved the movie, I didn’t like any of the characters that ‘won’, and that I didn’t approve of the ending in the way I approve of fairy tale endings, which was how the film tried to make its ending out to be. I had too much pity for the characters left behind, and couldn’t help feeling that the proverbial underdog of the film – and true hero – had been cheated by the plot. The French version certainly does a 180 in terms of which female character it favors, (although there’s still the poor abused cuckold minor character (Luke, or Lucien) that neither version seems too compassionate toward). In general, I feel as if the ’96 film – while much less pretty sounding or looking (those ’90s clothes, hairstyles and lighting styles are hard to overlook), is much more meaningful and has more to say. Wicker Park with Josh Hartnett is like one big American music video – pretty sounds and pretty people with the perfect prince and princess getting together in the end, while the whipping girl is left thrust to the side. I love music videos, don’t get me wrong. But I also love a good meaningful, fiery death. And while the American version has the ambience of the former, only the French version can give me the latter. Here’s a music video drawing from Wicker Park scenes for Postal Service’s cover of Phil Collins’ ‘Against All Odds’ and here’s a detailed essay comparing the two from cinemademerde.com. I should warn you: there are spoilers. Also, whoever wrote this found the 2004 soundtrack annoying, so beware; they can hardly be trusted.