Why Italy and France are preparing to go to war … over Emily in Paris

Rome: They are the best of frenemies who like nothing more than a squabble – over food, football and fashion, not to mention why the Mona Lisa is in the possession of the Louvre and not a museum in Rome.

Now a new front has opened in the long, tangled and sometimes acrimonious history of relations between Italy and France – and it’s all about Emily in Paris.

For the uninitiated, Emily in Paris is a TV series following Emily, an American living in the French capital (played by Lily Collins), as she navigates life, work and romance, invariably while wearing preposterously high-fashion outfits.

Lily Collins and Ashley Park in the fourth season of Emily in Paris: what’s wrong with fantasy?Credit: Netflix

Derided by critics but adored by fans, it is now the subject of an unlikely diplomatic standoff between the transalpine cousins.

For while there is much that binds the French and Italians together, there are sharp differences too. As poet and playwright Jean Cocteau once waspishly said: “French people are Italian people in a bad mood.”

Flying the red, white and blue tricolore for the French in the showdown is none other than the president, Emmanuel Macron. This week, he took umbrage at the fact that, in the fourth and most recent season of the hit Netflix show, Emily was transported to the sun-drenched piazzas and cobbled lanes of Rome, where she duly fell for a dark-haired Lothario on a scooter.

The creators of the series say that for the fifth season, the marketing manager from Chicago will be spending more time in the Eternal City: a revelation that has left President Macron less than happy. The prospect of Emily swapping the Eiffel Tower for the Trevi Fountain has gone down like a bowl of cold frites.

“We will fight hard,” he told Variety magazine. “And we will ask them to remain in Paris.”

Macron gave an interview to Hollywood journal Variety to demand Emily stay in Paris. Credit: AP

The economic benefits Emily brings to the capital city, enticing legions of followers to seek out places where she works, flirts and buys frocks, are just too good to give up, the president suggested.

“Emily in Paris is super positive in terms of attractiveness for the country. It’s a very good initiative.”

He was speaking not just as a national leader keen to promote his country’s capital, but as a proud husband. His wife, Brigitte, has a cameo appearance in the fourth season in which, during a chance meeting in a restaurant, she reveals that she follows Emily on Instagram.

“I was super proud, and she was very happy to do it,” Macron said. Asked whether he was also invited to make an appearance on the show, he joked: “I’m less attractive than Brigitte.”

Emmanuel Macron’s wife Brigitte had a cameo on the Netflix show, which is credited with driving a big tourism wave. Credit: AP

The president’s bullish remarks prompted a swift rebuttal from Italy.

Roberto Gualtieri, the mayor of Rome, wrote on X: “Dear Emmanuel Macron, don’t worry. Emily is doing really well in Rome. Plus, you can’t tell people what to do in matters of the heart. Let’s allow her to choose (between the two cities).“

It was meant as a spot of light-hearted jousting, but not all Italians took it that way.

Many have been irked by the unrealistically glamorous manner in which Emily in Paris has portrayed Rome, from stock tributes to films like La Dolce Vita and Gladiator, to streets miraculously free of double-parked cars and a Trevi Fountain devoid of hawkers and crowds.

Even the titles of the two episodes set in the Italian capital evoke familiar tropes: Roman Holiday and All Roads Lead to Rome. There’s gelato and amatriciana and girly gossip about “Italian stallions”.

The Rome episodes of Emily in Paris feature an uncrowded Trevi fountain.Credit: Netflix

Some said it was a marvel that Emily was able to wander the city at all, given there are roadworks and building projects on practically every corner as the capital tries to spruce itself up for the 2025 Jubilee - a holy year of special events organised by the Vatican.

Chaos rules in the city, even more than normal, as workers dig up roads, hack at overgrown vegetation, build a traffic tunnel in front of the Vatican and relay hundreds of thousands of cobbles.

Some Romans are aghast at the prospect of Emily in Paris enticing more tourists to the city. It is already awash with visitors after tourism bounced back with a vengeance post-pandemic.

As far as they are concerned, Paris is welcome to keep her.

The authorities have tried to crack down on short-term apartment lets and platforms like Airbnb, alongside revealing plans for a Trevi fountain entry fee in a bid to tackle the scourge of overtourism.

Just as the Parisians bridled at the syrupy way their city was portrayed in the Netflix series, so too have the Italians scoffed at the romanticised rendition of their capital.

There are dreamy images of the Colosseum by night, effusive restaurateurs, delicious pizza, handsome Italians and rides on Vespas, but little mention of dog poo, graffiti, piles of uncollected rubbish or predatory seagulls that pluck paninis from tourists’ hands.

Emily’s adventures in Rome revolve around “love, fountains and cliches”, according to Il Messagero, Rome’s daily newspaper.

The series portrays Italy as a country of “pasta and polpette [meatballs], Ferraris and Vespas, people with a big heart but with scarce regard for punctuality, wine, mandolins and Mamma Mia!“, the paper said sardonically. “We couldn’t have expected anything else,” because Emily in Paris had previously ticked “every possible French stereotype”.

But fans don’t care about such sniffy dismissals and delight in the glamorous and glossy escapism. The first season, which aired in 2020, was streamed by 58-million households worldwide and was acclaimed as Netflix’s most-watched show of 2022.

Darren Star, the creator of the hit series, said the idyllic portrayal of the city is deliberate.

“We ran with the beauty of the city of Rome,” he said. “I’m not trying to depict Rome as the overcrowded, garbage strewn, graffiti infested place - that’s not the Rome that Emily is experiencing.”

The London Telegraph

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