Recurrence of garbage truck.

It's shown at the start so as to imply that the view of Paris that the Walkers are about to see isn't going to be glamourous and romantic...it's going to be grim and smelly. (and will hardly do wonders for the Paris tourist board!)

'I'll need expenses...And my expenses are expensive...'

I like that idea rather than thinking they paid for the Grace Jones song and wanted to get the most money out of it.

Though the whole maze/trapped theory is more of a noir type movie setup.

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Good points note the final shot when the camera pans out of the darkness of the rubbish truck.

Considering I started this topic I feel a certain need to reply to your reply coming in 3.5 years later (I love this about IMDB message boards).

No, just no. Harrison was very respectful towards the girl. They experienced a lot. In the end he has his wife (while standing under the bridge), yet he again puts his life on the line to rescue her. He should not have done otherwise, but he could have fled.

When he is carrying her off I find it very touching to watch. There is real feeling there.

I think, since the boat she was staying it was at walking distance from the statue, he brought her to her friends on the board. Then he got his things and bolted out of there.

He experienced so much in those few days that it finally ending was probably the point it all starting to really hit.

Another note, this movie is coming out on Blu-ray real soon! I can't wait. I think this is one of the most underrated movies of all time.



"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy."

I also couldn't help the thought passing my mind that they dumped Michelle into the garbage cans. And refuting that fantasy with the idea to 'Walker' is too respectful of 'Michelle' to just dump her like that.

Yet the association in the movie is too strong to be just coincidence. Specially for a director who is known to be very thoughtful and well-prepared for every scene. They walk off with the body, we see large garbage-cans being emptied, and next they are in a taxi without the body. Polanski at least must have *wanted* us to have that association, even while it is nothing more than that.

It mirrors the futility of the affairs in 'Frantic': in the end, all that is left is garbage: dead gangsters who have gained nothing, priceless electronics thrown in the water, and a sympathetic heroine sacrificed for nothing. Walker confesses his love to his wife, but it is an unvictorious love, that sounds mostly like 'let's get the hell out of this mess'.

"Look distraught?"

Man what a 3 day weekend. You get on the plane expecting to recreate the magic of your Parisian honeymoon 10 years earlier. Only to step into Alices rabbithole. Within 24 hours wifes gone........you find a body, lose your wife, run into spies or drug dealers or who knows what. Encounter passive aggressive bureaucrats, the glamorati, drugs etc etc.

Truly the type of vacation you need a vacation to get over.

The trash trucks bookend the movie. It begins and ends with trash trucks.

At the begining the husband and wife are driving into the city from the airport through the newer, more modern part of Paris. The wife says: Do you recognize it? The husband says: No. this part is new.

A few minutes later they are in the old part of the city, stuck behind a trash truck. The wife says: Now do you recognize it? The husband says with a smirk: Yeah.

Then the trash truck turns a corner revealing the Eiffel Tower. The "tourist" sights are blighted out by the ugly day-to-day things, like taking out the trash. It forshaddows the whole film ahead, by saying this isn't going to be about the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, The Louve, or the Metro (I heard a scene was filmed on the metro and cut...good call), it's going to be about the ugly side, the every day side, the side as smelly and mundane as taking out the trash.

The repeat of the trash truck at the end just calls back to the begining and reafirms this theme.

Here we now have underground containers, but not every municipality has them yet.

I find it interesting this thread I started 4,5 years ago is still going.



"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy."

I think the close cut from the garbage truck driving away following the cut of Harrison Ford walking away carrying Michelle and then the fast cut to him and his wife driving away in a taxi leaves the interpretation open. It's ambiguous. He could have put her in the garbage truck or he might not have.

As one of the OP's said the film is full of recurrent themes/motifs:- the miniature statue of the Eiffel Tower in which the detonator is concealed links to the scene where Ford's character wakes up on a houseboat looking at the large statue of the Eiffel Tower and it's shown again in the final shoot out scene. Michelle's night dress (long t-shirt) has a picture of a large blue parrot on it and later on they meet with Fords wife's kidnappers in 'The Blue Parrot' nightclub. The Grace Jones track is played three times, on the way back from the airport, in the nightclub and in the background when Ford speaks on the phone to his daughter. Both Michelle and Ford's wife both wear red dresses for the climactic scene on the Seine riverside - and it highlights the different fate both of them have - one escaping to a comfortable life with her husband and one who will soon die and may or may not have her body dumped in a garbage truck. Nicholas Roeg did something similar with the colour red in 'Don't Look Now'; its use was an omen for future events.

I think Seigneur was fantastic in this movie. She is represented like an alley cat, completely alone except for Ford's temporary stewardship and as trying to survive without the luxury of being moral. We see Dede's abandoned pet cat shortly before she comes to the flat to look for her money; she's agile enough to be able to climb on the roof to access her apartment by the back window in contrast to Ford who barely makes it and loses his footwear in the process. She seems to know instinctively how to survive, dragging Ford away from the dead driver and stealing his wallet with a simple 'He doesn't need it anymore' response to Ford's outraged 'You took his wallet?' I think there is a lot of Polanski in Michelle's character - he had to survive alone during the war when his parents were carted off to a concentration camp and was at one stage very badly beaten. Ford's character with his comfortable middle class life has the luxury of decency - Seigneur's character didn't.