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.