Passport to Paris (1999)
Season 1 of Growing Up Millennial starts off with a trip to see our crochety Ambassador Grandpa.
The year was 1999. As a newly minted teenager, I was primed for an introduction to rom-coms. You see, the previous year my hormones had turned boys, icky beings, into objects of… misplaced affection, let’s just say. Plainly, I was a boy-crazy 12-year-old. The level of my craze for boys was such that my best friend’s parents worried I was a bad influence on their genius daughter. The fact that I ended up getting my first kiss when I was 18 years old and in college (that’s six years later, in case you needed me to spell out the math), didn’t seem to matter. I was a bad influence. I wonder if I still am…
Anyway, when Passport to Paris (1999) was released on video (that’s VHS tape to you, reader), one of my frenemies invited me over to watch it. As soon as the movie started, I was hooked. I believed every single frame. In retrospect, my sheltered upbringing in Puerto Rico is to blame for this, but I’m pretty sure I also believed that the future was going to be more like Zenon and less like… well… this current hellscape, but I digress.
As soon as I got home, I begged for my own copy of this movie (produced by Dualstar Entertainment Group, a company owned by twin sister actresses Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen, and Tapestry films). Dualstar went on to produce more films, TV series, video games, and other things I can’t really get into right now. I think… I have a vague memory of a magazine. Is that right? Eh, who cares, we’re here to talk about Passport to Paris.
In case it’s been more than, I don’t know, a few years since you’ve watched this gem of a movie, the general plot is the following: Ally and Melanie are boy-crazy (newly minted) teenagers and their world revolves around pool parties and the mall. Their parents send them to Paris to visit their grandfather, who I will be referring to as Ambassador Grandpa throughout this post. While in France, they meet and fall for two French teenage boys, meet a supermodel, and somehow end up convincing the French Prime Minister to sign a clean water treaty when Ambassador Grandpa couldn’t. If you want more on the A-Plot, it’s time you check out our podcast by clicking the button below. The episode is titled Passport to Paris (original, I know).
Here’s the 411
Montage count: 7
Titanic references: 1
Love Triangles: 0, if we discount Shane and Kyle as romantic prospects.
Anyway, I could sit here and type about the late 90s fashions on display throughout the movie (those hats? Iconic… but also terrible -both can be true) or how my 13-year-old self lusted after wanted those cross-body backpacks. Side note: As a whole 37-year-old adult, I still kind of want these backpacks, so that means that either they’re timeless, my fashion sense has not evolved, or that late 90s trends are coming back (It could be all three, honestly).
I could also describe the Louvre montage in its insanity. I mean… Paintings taking flight in the middle of Paris? Inspired cinema.
But all of the above and more are covered in our podcast, so I don’t want to repeat myself. What I do want to talk about is the B-Plot of this movie, which honestly could have been a rom-com all on its own, had the Hallmark Channel had something to do with it: Jeremy (Matt Winston) and Brigitte (Yvonne Sciò).
Jeremy and Brigitte: Workaholic Policy Nerds Itching for Love
When we first meet Jeremy (aka J-Man) on screen, we see he is a very hurried assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to France (Jeremy walked so that Andy could run in The Devil Wears Prada). He’s just a guy trying to manage Ambassador Grandpa’s schedule and prove to him that he’s ready for a more senior position in his staff. He’s even written a policy paper! But, like many of the heroines we meet in rom-coms, J-Man is down on his luck. Instead of being recognized and promoted for his efforts, he’s relegated to babysitting Ambassador Grandpa’s twin granddaughters while they’re on spring break, Allison and Melanie.
Poor Jeremy is bereft. His aspirations have been put on pause, yet again while he chaperones 13-year-olds through Paris. On their first day sight-seeing, the girls have a bit of a meet-cute with some French teenage boys riding on mopeds, which you could honestly clip out and make it look like the prequel to Taken.
He doesn’t think much of it until the girls ambush him with having figured out how to find those French boys (it’s called the Yellow Pages, duh). The girls invite the boys to lunch with them and Jeremy because they have clearly never heard the phrase stranger danger, so instead of figuring out a way to advance his career, he gets to listen to these boys talk about their band, Videohead. Thrilling, I’m sure.
He excuses himself to go to the restroom and finds the girls have disappeared (along with the boys they just properly met this morning). Suddenly, the Taken situation doesn’t seem so outlandish for like 0.5 seconds until he gets the note that says they’ll meet him at the embassy at 5 PM, which is not perfect from his POV, but at least they’re not kidnapped… yet. At this, J-Man has an understandable panic attack.
He tries to be stern and in control when the girls return, only to be manipulated by them into keeping silent. Kids, I tell you. The girls definitely know they’ve pushed their luck, but they have an inspired idea to win Jeremy’s goodwill back. Their plan includes altering the typed schedule replacing whatever they had planned for the next day with the gardens where the supermodel they met earlier in the week, Brigitte, casually mentioned she was having a photoshoot. The second phase of their plan is hoping a meet-cute emerges from their scheming (in a world before all the dating apps, Ally and Melanie were on it).
Cue J-Man and Brigitte’s meet-cute.
Not only is Brigitte a supermodel in her own right, but she is educated, speaks five languages, and did her master’s dissertation on the Middle East Peace Talks. It’s pretty clear that J-Man is a goner after this.
Brigitte is not skeeved out either, which is surprising after that Macarena choreography he so inelegantly delivered as part of a story within seemingly minutes of meeting each other.
Jeremy, now having hearts in his eyes for this genius supermodel who just so happens to be a policy nerd (is this an example of manifestation on his part?), lets the girls go ahead and meet with the French boys, a move that has Brigitte melting. I’m sure she saw it as him being a sensitive man, but all I thought at that moment was “SUCKER!”
Even after meeting Brigitte, though, his professional woes are still at the forefront of his mind. While enjoying contraband Mickey Donald’s (as Henri, the Ambassador’s chef, calls it), Jeremy is so down on his luck that he turns to 13-year-olds for advice. As a former 13-year-old, I do not recommend this approach, but this is part of that movie magic I keep hearing about.
His soft approach with the girls continues: he coordinates a shopping spree with Brigitte and the girls and he lets them sneak out to meet the boys. When the girls are late returning, Brigitte assures him that she knows the girls are okay because of “women’s intuition.” Honestly, they should have cast her as Liam Neeson’s partner in Taken. I would have loved seeing his character’s reaction to that reassurance.
The girls return in a police car (the teens had been trespassing in the name of romance, since apparently being in Paris is not romantic enough). This lands J-Man in scalding hot water (which by the way is another plot point in this movie: clean water is not a big thing in France, apparently).
J-Man Unleashed
Now this is the moment where he finds his courage and lashes out against the man. He lets Ambassador Grandpa know his thoughts on how he should be spending more time with the twins and how he should have recognized that J-Man had something to offer. He quits his assistant job on the spot, letting the guilt-ridden twins know that it’s something he should have done months ago. Brigitte’s reaction to all of this? She looks thrilled to learn that the sensitive man she’s been seeing also has a bit of fire in him. So much so that she’s cradling her abdomen in this moment (which leads me to believe her ovaries are screaming I want his babies).
Anyway, after the twins read his policy paper and create some hijinks to convince the French Prime Minister to accept the water treaty, Ambassador Grandpa rehires Jeremy as the Senior Policy Advisor to the United States Ambassador. Oh to be a fly on that wall when Ambassador Grandpa apologized to Jeremy and promoted him.
Slow dancing amongst a crowd of teenagers (new nightmare unlocked), Brigitte fondly looks at the twins and their French boyfriends. She sighs, and says “To be young and in love,” to which Jeremy replies, “Oh but I am, mademoiselle.” They kiss, and that is where our journey with them ends (for the most part).
Sure, falling in love in a week seems awfully fast, but I’m willing to suspend my sense of disbelief. I mean, I fully bought into the plot of How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, and that’s just three days longer than Spring Break.