16. Go to the Movies

Meet the tribe of Desperate Mothers Who Watch MCU Movies Alone at 9 AM.

The greatest gift I can get these days is alone time. Paris offers many beautiful places to enjoy solitude, but nowhere have I felt more happily alone yet still a part of a sick and twisted community than at the 9AM showing of the latest Marvel movie at UGC Ciné Cité Les Halles.

Nine AM is usually the earliest you can go to the cinema in Paris. I started going to these early screenings after my first kid was born. Between taking care of her and the household and slogging away at a soul-sucking ad agency, I had to fight tooth and nail for any true solitary time that didn't involve just napping.

Some people like the MCU because of the comics or because of the Dorito-shaped beefcakes named Chris or because they just can't get enough third-act CGI-fueled battle scenes. I had watched the movies long before moving to France but it wasn't until I saw Avengers: Infinity War at Le Grand Rex, amidst a mob of screaming French nerds and their beleaguered partners,¹ that I began religiously watching each one the week of their release.

By now, watching an MCU film has definitely reached the point of diminishing returns. The recent ones have been slogs, the fan service has gotten stale, and the Dorito-shaped Chrises have been replaced in the zeitgeist by French-fry-shaped Timothées.

But I still do my best to make it to those 9 AM showings at Les Halles. It was at Shang-Chi that I noticed the audience was almost all solo viewers, a great number women. By their cardigans and sensible haircuts, I guessed they were mostly mothers. I wondered if we were all there for the same reason: to be blissfully alone and out of the house.

Yes, we could have all opted for an indie arthouse film at one of the many charming Latin Quarter movie houses, but I suppose we wanted something more anonymous and mindless — and at 9 AM. Only the very devoted or very desperate go to the movies in Paris that early.

The moment I knew the tribe of Desperate Mothers Who Watch MCU Movies Alone at 9 AM was real: in the latest Dr. Strange movie, the villain was Scarlet Witch, basically a mom who goes on a superhero murder rampage for the sake of her annoying mutant kids.