It’s a new Rendezvous

The (in)famous dash across Paris, filmed in the early hours of a Sunday morning has been recreated in Monaco in a real Ferrari this time.

Let’s be honest, none of this makes a lick of sense, but that’s okay, because the world has gone stark raving bonkers anyway.

We’re all Jonesing for a bit of an escape, though, and our friends at Ferrari are never shy in throwing a bit of escapism our way.

The new film, Le Grand Rendez-Vous, stars Ferrari F1 star and Vettel-toppler Charles Leclerc. Unlike the Lelouch original, C’était un Rendez-Vous, which was reputed to have been filmed with a Ferrari 275 GTB.

That is spectacularly unlikely given the footage doesn’t feature any bottoming-out over the cobbles of Parisian streets.

It later emerged that the car was Lelouch’s Mercedes-Benz 450SEL which makes a heck of a lot more sense. Strapping a camera to a car with hydro-pneumatic suspension is far less fraught.

The film owes its existence to the completion of director Lelouch’s Si C’était à Refaire. The director found he still had 1000 feet (300 metres) of film left and thought it would be a jolly jape.

For younger readers, movies used to be shot on long strips of photographic film and its capacity depended on its length rather than the size of hard drives. Back then a one gigabyte hard drive was four years away and even then weighed 250kg.

The original

Once the camera was on the car and there was enough light, the earliest known dash cam went into action.

There’s a fair bit of incriminating stuff, the driver accelerating through nearly 20 red lights. He had just one spotter, at the Louvre, but their walkie-talkie broke. Instead of, you know, not launching out on to Rue de Rivoli, he did. Even Lelouch concedes it was “totally immoral.”

That’s straightened that out, then.

The remake

With the cancellation of the Monaco Grand Prix, there was a famous street track to use without a race to run on it. Lelouch and Ferrari weren’t too bothered by the stretch of imagination required to link the two, but that’s fine by me.

We get to see the bonkers new SF90 Stradale in action around the streets of Monaco. Young Charles is a Monaco local, so apparently a lap of the track before a date is a narrative idea that should work.

Unlike the first film, we get to see things from multiple camera angles and it’s great to look at.

In a nice nod to the original, we meet the granddaughter of the young lady at the end of the original, which is kind of cute.

It’s all a bit of fun and a nice start to the week, non?

Peter Anderson

Peter Anderson is the Editor and founder of the theredline.com.au. He’s been writing about cars for years and finds it difficult to talk about anything else.