TRAVEL own hand), a monochromatic scheme playing off the instruments employed and active earphones installed into the headboards, the first floor is soundscape incarnate. It prods our imaginations into accompanying decades of music, allowing us to wander between the notes. A drum roll for the legendary composer…? – How about a drum for a night table, instead. As for the second floor, it is a velvet-textured dreamscape with pinks, grays and mauve. It is a stage worthy of the César-awarded French actress, Elsa Zylberstein whose history in dance and theatre inflects the approach. A soft afterglow lends the impression of a fading spotlight. The fleeting echoes of once thunderous applause rustle the veranda’s curtains. The third floor is less ‘inspired by’ than ‘based on’ nature. It required the active participation and vision of the lauded acting/writing couple Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri of Smoking/No Smoking and Under the Rainbow. Although the dark wood and red curtain ambience adhere to today’s ‘no smoking’ policies, there is a smoldering mood – one alluding to the married film couple who had spent their lives enveloped in a rainbow of love, respect and (as the script excerpts and posters demonstrate) a shared delight in theater.
meets-exacting procedure – a process greatly indicative of Lelouch. Here, our memories become celluloid on a cutting room floor and it is film, which is real. We have become screen-tested people in a world of suspended disbelief.
The fourth floor is sensuality with flourish, élan with restraint and mostly, costume drama coerced into contemporary form. In short, it is the world of Danièle Thompson, the inimitable screenwriter behind La reine de Margot and Cousin, Cousine. Chiariscuro plays an important role as light and dark tones are vividly demarked with crimson velvet and wood playing off a mosaic of photographs. Entering the 5th Floor means entering the POV of Claude Lelouch, a prolific director who’s often relied on actual locations to substitute for sets. This vividly graphic black and white world is one in which backlighting pours over screens with large-scaled reprints of dailies. Complete with director’s chair, the mood is one of improvisation-
On the sixth floor: a punching bag with red leather gloves, a Palme d’or embroidered with that odd feminine touch; the whole scene screams: Jean-Paul Belmando. It’s only fitting that the film icon who started with French New Wave cinema should be the hotel’s crowning touch. With a projection room on the lower ground floor named after the legendary director Gérard Oury and an indoor terrace overlooking an outer wall of celebrated actors done in stencils, Sebastopol 123 is an auteur’s paradise. In 2006, Emmanuel Benhiby took 20 directors, and had each make an episode for the film Paris Je t’aime. More recently, Maidenberg constructed a similar anthology without shooting a single frame. His Sebastopol 123 could easily have been called Cinema Je t’aime. It’s likely that this is one of those films that many will want to see over and over again. For more information: le123sebastopol.com/en
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