“Paris Soirees”: A Silent Short Story Collection

I’m a sucker for silent comics. This one uses the form in interesting ways, so I’m giving it points on the theoretical level.

I’m just not so sure I care enough about the stories, though.

Shhh, Credits Time!

Writers: Philippe Petit-Roulet & Francois Avril
Artist: Francois Avril
Published by: Humanoids
Number of Pages: 62
Original Publication: 2012

What’s Going On?

“Paris Soirees” — literally translated to “Paris Evenings” — is a collection of short, silent stories. They fit together with the theme of night spots in Paris. We get an apartment, a party, a club, and more. Characters dance, flirt, enjoy music, try to get a seat at a restaurant, and more.

It’s very much a set of slice-of-life stories, with no connections or continuity.

Francois Avril’s art is very iconic. These characters look like something you might have found in the 60s or 70s. They’re very geometric. They’re distinct and can gesture in realistic ways. The whole world is of a piece, too. The characters match the backgrounds as far as detail and design go. This isn’t one of those books where the cartoony characters exist in a world of realistic backgrounds.

The whole thing feels like something that might have been done in the 50s or early 60s by someone trained in advertising art.

How Do They Do That?

The first thing you’ll notice in reading this book is the use of color. It’s fairly flat with all panels keyed to a specific color. But they also use color to guide your eye. Many crowded scenes only make sense because there’s a spotlight of color where they want your eye to go.

This holds true right up front in the first story, which starts with an overhead view of a city street. The story takes plans in the club just through the doors in the middle of the panel. You know that’s coming, because it’s lit up yellow against the red that fills the rest of the panel.

As the story goes on, you notice that scenes and characters are off set from one another by the dominant color in the panels. It’s red when our protagonist is sitting alone in the corner, but then blue when the magician is performing on stage.

Later in the book, color schemes are used to denote time periods or locations or scenes. Avril uses it everywhere to his advantage in multiple ways. It’s not subtle coloring. No, this is front and center coloring being used as part of the storytelling.

The Stories of Paris Nights

Let’s break these down, one by one. The five stories in the book are titled by the street addresses they happen at. I’m giving them more descriptive titles for the sake of discussing them more easily.

Bad Night at the Club

A man is brought out to a club by his friend, who proceeds to basically dump him off on his own in a corner under the speaker where it’s deafeningly loud. Things only get worse from there, as he sees a drug deal in the bathroom, gets dragged on stage against his will by one performer, and generally has a miserable time.

There is a happy ending for the man, but that’s a spoiler I’ll skip.

I like the story. It’s easily understood, and I can feel for the guy. There’s nothing worse that being at a place where it’s so loud that you can’t talk to the person sitting across the table from you. Being abandoned by your friend and then having him come back to ruin what little fun you do have only makes it worse.

This is a sympathetic tale of a character caught in a bad situation who, in the end, gets some small measure of revenge by retreating into his own happiness.

Striking Out

It’s a party at someone’s house, and our new protagonists are not having any luck with the ladies. They get turned down repeatedly, and everywhere they walk couples are pairing up left and right. Once they find each other, there’s hope for a night that doesn’t depend on these issues.

It’s a clear, well-told story with a happy ending. You need to pay close attention because there’s a lot of people in the apartment and the ‘action’ cuts between the two protagonists often. Thankfully, they have different enough designs that you shouldn’t get them easily confused.

The color schemes in this story are a little wider open. It’s not so oppressively monochromatic. Things feel more wide open. Again, there’s a bit of a feeling with this story ,like the first one, that

One Good Night, Then Everything Goes Wrong

After one successful evening of bedroom frolicking, the man and woman have a rocky next day. They’re just out of tune with each other. He’s being too forward when she’s not into him. And when she finally does show interest, things go badly.

And then they spend the day together exploring the city.

I feel like I’m missing something in this story. I’ve gone back to it a few times, trying to figure if I’m missing a big time jump or if the whole thing was a dream or some other twist I missed. Taking it at face value, it has some funny moments, but it isn’t completely satisfying.

Dance Party

This one doesn’t have a single story. The entire story is the same camera angle for a half page, for five pages. It’s the story of a little party with what look like classic 50s hipsters dancing and drinking and having a good time.

The fascinating part of this story is that there’s a dozen different little stories going on. You can read this one multiple times, following a different character each time, and find something new. It’s the least dramatic of all the stories in the book, but it is also the most impressive.

As an experiment in the medium, it’s a success. I could analyze it multiple ways, and there’s plenty left to the reader’s imagination without the word balloons.

A Night On the Town

Now here’s one I can really identify with. It’s all about a double date where everything goes wrong. They can’t find a seat at a restaurant. When they find one, the place is miserable. There’s some arguments about where to go and what to do.

Ultimately, a good time is had by all, but it takes some extra steps to get there, so the minor victory over the crowds of Paris feels more satisfying than it probably is. Sometimes, it’s the little wins that are most impressive.

It’s a good story to go out on.

Recommended?

Not at full price, no. It’s a nice book and I enjoyed reading it, but I can think of many other books I could have spent the same money on to get more enjoyment. It’s not that it’s bad, but that it doesn’t quite click with me. I enjoy it from a craft perspective.

If it’s on sale one day for $3 digitally, then it’s worth it. (It’s actually $5 on the Kindle store and Comixology as I write this, which is a good price point.)

Available In Print

Humanoids offered this 64 page book as a coffee table book. It’s 12 x 16 inches in size and retailed for $70. The pages are designed simply enough that you don’t need the large page size to see all the fine details, but Avril does include some larger crowd scenes along the way that would be nice to see in a larger format.

It’s available on Amazon for nearly half price through various third party sellers, some of whom don’t offer Prime, so be careful.

Buy It Now (Digitally)