Netflix at the Louvre

Netflix at the Louvre

Musée du Louvre and National Gallery of London

As I mentioned I was writing on the Louvre, some kind souls informed me that an episode of a series that is currently a big hit on Netflix takes place here. I looked into the matter. Heartstopper, based on a very popular graphic novel, tells the story of the sensual awakening of a class of British teenagers. During the second season, a school trip brings them to Paris. This is the Paris of Emily in Paris (which, to my humble knowledge, has not yet recounted a visit to the Louvre, but indeed a lunch at the Café Marly and an engagement at the Musée d’Orsay): the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Élysées, the Eiffel Tower, Montmartre, the padlocks of the Pont des Arts, and, naturally, an hour at the Louvre (apparently the average visit-length is an hour and a half, including the line for the bathroom). Now, to my great surprise, after a scene beside the pyramid and another in front of the Mona Lisa, I no longer recognized my Louvre but rather the National Gallery in London, with its ocean-liner benches and Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus. The camera nevertheless returns to the Cour de Khorsabad, the Iranian rotunda (at the planned site of the Chapelle Saint-Napoléon), and then to the Cour Marly, where the lovers pair off. In an age when kids know everything thanks to ChatGPT, it seems odd to have tried to make the National Gallery pass for the Louvre, as if one museum was as good as another. But the young lovers’ race through the Cour Marly in Heartstopper can’t match the visit of the Louvre in nine minutes and a few seconds in Godard’s Bande à Part in 1964.