Review
Paris
Olympics opening ceremony review – soaring ambition deflated by patchy delivery
River, roads
and rooftops were in play on rain sodden night that lacked usual class of
French capital
Arifa Akbar
Sat 27 Jul
2024 00.19 CEST
The
immaculate execution of Tokyo’s Olympic opening ceremony was always going to be
a tough act to follow. Paris made the canny decision not to try to emulate its
stadium spectacle and hi-tech bling. (Remember that formidable arrangement of
1,800 drones?)
This
ceremony’s creative director, Thomas Jolly, had the inspired idea to lean into
Paris’s famed romance by using the city itself as a stage. So a
country-by-country flotilla of athletes sailed down the Seine while a 6km (3.7
mile) parade snaked across its bridges, roads and rooftops. But what appears
like a truly original idea on paper does not always live up to its enactment on
a rain-sodden night in central Paris.
There were
some highlights: French Algerian footballing legend, Zinedine Zidane, handing
the Olympic torch to a group of children to kick things off; a gorgeously
choreographed dance showing the reconstruction of Notre Dame and a gold carpet
unfurled for fabulous French-Malian singer-songwriter, Aya Nakamura at Pont des
Arts, with dancers shimmering alongside her (the rumour that she was to perform
at this ceremony had led to racist outrage from far-right politicians so her
presence at the ceremony felt like a triumph given Marine Le Pen’s recent
defeat).
But there
were some thoroughly weird curatorial decisions too. Why, for example, was Lady
Gaga the first act? Surrounded by pink ostrich feathers and wearing a
fascinator that looked like a feather quill atop her head, she put on her best
French accent to sing Mon truc en plumes (originally by Zizi Jeanmaire) but it
still looked like a scrappy, tacky, riverbank cabaret by an American pop star.
Billboards with a pink wash (a visual pun on La Vie en Rose?) featured words
like “chic!” and looked low rent too. French heavy metal band Gojira played one
minute, an opera singer sang Bizet’s Carmen the next. And the torchbearer was
faceless and hooded, like a maniacal creation from the Halloween film
franchise, sprinting across roofs and zip-lining across buildings like he might
be chasing a screaming victim.
As creative
as it might have been, it appeared disjointed, with the sense of many things
happening simultaneously, and the promenading performances jumping from one
idea to the next – from a cancan to a gothic tableau featuring mock-beheaded
women at the windows of the Conciergerie with red streamers that looked like
macabre spurting blood.
The French
Revolution’s guiding principles of liberty, equality and fraternity (with
sorority thrown in) ostensibly gave the show its structure but in effect it
seemed to have heaps of Amelie-style whimsy but no deeper unity or coherence.
And while there was a democracy in staging it across the streets, rather like
the Tour de France, it felt like a piecemeal spectacle, no doubt fleeting for
those watching it in Paris.
Paris is
known for its taste but this looked like a motley outfit thrown together. Water
cannons, street dancers in Louis XIV outfits, and ultra-camp fashion shows
which seemed like a crime against haute couture: it would not have looked out
of place at Cannes’ gaudy la Croisette.
At least it
calmed down into a dignified procession by the time it reached the Trocadero,
with a silver-clad figure arriving on horseback, although a frenzy of blue
lasers beaming across the Eiffel Tower brought another off-note. The most
striking moment of the night came at its end, as the Olympic cauldron was lit
inside a hot air balloon. It launched into the night sky like a floating,
orange-red orb. A magnificent spectacle, finally, set again Celine Dion’s
evocative rendition of Edith Piaf’s L’Hymne à l’amour. The ceremony could have
done with so much more of this class.
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