Under Paris (French title: Sous Paris) is a 2024 thriller co-produced by France and Canada and directed by Benoît Jacquot. The story follows Clara Delacroix, a forensic botanist played by Adèle Exarchopoulos, who returns to the city after years abroad when her estranged brother Étienne is sentenced for murdering a young art student near the Catacombs. Doubting the guilty verdict and plagued by memories of their childhood, Clara launches her own inquiry, a gamble that plunges her into Paris’s hidden worlds-both literal tunnels and shadowy allegiances.
Her search drags her through the city’s ancient passages, sealed Metro shafts, and derelict vaults, spaces where plain rock shelters secrets far darker than geology. Teaming with stubborn journalist Mohamed “Mo” Saïd (Romain Duris), she discovers an underground gallery circuit, coded plant experiments, and plots that stretch back to the Revolution. Strange evidence-rare fungi at murder sites and faded botanical prints tucked inside police files-points toward a clandestine order that weaponizes floral toxins in ritual murders.
Claras quest intertwines personal loss and high-stakes sleuthing, pulling her from cryptic texts to waterlogged tombs, hidden greenhouse lairs, and secretive alleyway rendezvous. The narrative tightens as Etiennes sentencing deadline approaches, each discovery ramping up the risk Clara faces. During the final catacomb standoff, faceless power brokers step into the light, revealing that the cover-up stretches into glittering salons. With the clandestine garden shattered and harsh realities laid bare, Clara must decide whether to shield her brother or bring down the network that nearly ruined them both.
Direction & Visual Style
Director Beno?t Jacquot leans toward low-key, character-focused storytelling, letting every frame breathe. In his hands, the twisting tunnels and pitch-black corridors become reluctant co-stars, tightening the vise on Claras fear, resolve, and grief. True to his European roots, he works at a measured tempo, asking viewers to sit with the silence. Slow pans contrast brief urban glare with deep, swallowing shadows, mirroring the buried truths and ethical fog that drive the plot.
Cinematographer Agnès Godard bathes each cave take in the amber glow of studio lamps that soak into the damp rock; the result echoes both Delacroixs inner fragility and the quiet mystery she tries to tease out. Sound, too, carries weight-Claras footfalls, dripping water, far-off train horns, and hushed voices thicken the air and build unease. Bright, busy labs and sunlit greenhouses open the film, their lively colors and ordered life stand in sharp contrast to the tunnels yet suggest, as an afterthought, how people shape and tame wild power.
Editing is firm but unshowy-pressing revelations drop in mid-shot along warehouse aisles or inside sewer tubes, so the viewer feels the twist in real time instead of watching it staged. The score stays modest: a minor-piano line shadows Clara wherever she goes, and sharp staccato hits underline every new truth pulled from the darkness.
🙋♀️ Cast & Characters
Adèle Exarchopoulos as Clara Delacroix: A troubled botanist whose love for her brother battles her need to unearth the facts. Exarchopoulos layers soft regret and hard resolve as Clara swings from scientific wonder to dogged detective.
Romain Duris as Mohamed Mo Saïd: An ambitious reporter whose hunger for a story collides with his moral compass; his easy rapport with Clara provides warmth while suspense grows.
Swann Arlaud as Étienne Delacroix: The brother in the dock, his blank gaze and shifting answers twist Claras guilt, trust, and uncertainty into knots.
Isabelle Huppert appears briefly as Sophie Roux, a retired curator who quietly belongs to the secret society and subtly suggests the more shadowy elegance of Paris.
Vincent Cassel plays Alexandre Fournier, a polished financier whose public acts of charity hide a private devotion to grisly plant rites.
Lyna Khoudri portrays Nina, a sewer specialist who guides Clara through the tunnels while her own motives remain unclear.
🏆 Production & Filming
Filmed on-site in Paris and throughout the Ile-de-France in autumn 2023, the crew worked in genuine catacomb halls-cleaned for safety-and in shuttered metro tunnels after dark. Observers praised the unit for capturing an authentic, haunting mood amid the citys concrete veins. Lighting and haze were timed to create what Jacquot calls chthonic romance-a dark love tinged with dread.
Scenes inside the plant laboratory were staged under glass at Montreuil, featuring live rare orchids and fungus cultures. Clarias workspace is arranged in semi-chaotic disorder, mirroring her torn psyche and methodical research. Jacquot consulted botanists to accurately render phytotoxins, blights, test equipment and the rituals of modern plant science.
Composer Frédéric Chopins quiet motifs reappear in new piano lines that build tension and deepen the characters grief. Jacquot avoids overblown orchestration; he chooses close, personal sounds that intensify the films inner conflicts rather than masking them with loud spectacle.
Themes & Symbolism
- Buried Truths vs. Public Image
Pariss layered tunnels stand for hidden secrets both individual and civic. The catacombs, filled with countless skulls, echo ideas of shared memory, haunting guilt, and forgotten histories. - Nature as Weapon and Witness
Plants in the frame offer beauty and unease at once. Toxic fungi, mind-altering herbs, and rare blossoms hint at decay lurking behind surface charm. - Family and Redemption
Clarass race to clear her brothers name forces her to confront wounds from their youth. She discovers that the full truth can free people and shatter them. - Power and Ritual
The secret cults garden ceremonies mix luxury with waste-they sacrifice life for status while misusing what grows around them. - Urban Demons of the Everyday
By wiring spray-painted passages to elite galleries, the film pairs polished civility with lurking danger beneath the pavements.
Critics praised Under Paris for its moody storytelling, solid lead performances, and tension that unraveled at just the right speed. Reviewers singled out Exarchopoulos; she moves between guilt, scientific wonder, and stubborn hope in a single look. Duris, by contrast, tempers that intensity with dry pragmatism and proves far more than a routine sidekick.
Most critics agreed that the plot sometimes twists upon itself, but they argued that mood and character, not puzzle-solving, provide the films real pull. The films restraint-no roaring car chases or CGI detonations-makes each suspicion and revelation feel rawer and hit harder.
Some viewers found the final scenes murkier than the Paris fog, raising questions about the societies roots and wider reach. Others welcomed the haze, claiming it mirrors the films own buried secrets. The ever-present plants also sparked chat; they remind us how easily beauty blooms beside danger.
Anyone who loves thrillers that take their time and linger in the mind.
Fans of make-do sleuths, whether reluctant botanists or curious night owls.
People drawn to European cinema that trades spectacle for mood.
Anyone who enjoys stories where personal stakes mingle with quiet literary symbols.
Under Paris is a hauntingly lovely plunge into the shadows of hidden truths, tangled family ties, and elusive green wonders. Supported by Adèle Exarchopoulos in a gripping lead, the film weaves sumptuous images with a quiet strain of suspense that sticks around well after the house lights come up.
By giving Frances underground past the weight of a living presence and intermixing it with dreamlike plant lore, director Benoît Jacquot crafts a thriller that probes inward yet disturbs outward. Grounded in loyalty to kin and an appeal for honest inquiry, Under Paris earns its place among the Continent’s freshest noirs and botanic whodunits.
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