Somehow heartbreak feels good in a place like this.

When the lights dim in the theater, no one can tell if you’re sitting alone.

I love going to the movies alone. I’ve never questioned the habit until recently.

I’m trying to minimize luxury purchases while I build a life savings from scratch, but I couldn’t miss seeing the Eras Tour in theaters, even for a premium ticket price. And it wasn’t the only movie I saw this week either. When making a budget involves borrowing from the “Gas” category to bump up “Entertainment” in preparation for the pre-awards-season wave of releases, I couldn’t help but wonder … if I was leaning a little too hard into the Carrie Bradshaw of it all:

When I first moved to Paris, I had a week to myself before international student orientation. I’ve written before about the mixed emotions of those months, but my feelings of loneliness and homesickness were never stronger than in the unforgiving January cold.

To escape the weather, I bought a ticket to Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story after passing a marquee outside of the métro. The subtitles were in French, except for when the characters spoke Spanish—then, the bottom of the screen just read [ESPAGNOL.] I had to work out what the Sharks were saying from context clues half the time. Still, taking myself to the movies became a balm. In my fellow moviegoers, I found a contrived sense of communion.

I soon stumbled upon another theater that showed classic American and French films. Écoles Cinéma Club was named for its close proximity to several colleges and universities on the rue des Écoles. Tickets with my Sciences Po student ID were only €7,50 euros, far less than I would have otherwise spent on a night out. It felt like a place that other students were gathering—even if I couldn’t keep up with their conversations in rapid-fire French, milling outside the theater over loosely held cigarettes before or after a screening—along with older locals keen on preserving the great Parisian institutions of arthouse cinemas.

And the Left Bank was fertile ground for these relics. It seemed like I couldn’t throw a stone in my neighborhood without hitting a movie theater, many of them with only two or three screens at 20 or so seats each. Parisians are proud of their place in the pantheon of film, both as consumers and creators. It all seemed steeped in nostalgia for this Américaine, but then so did much of the city.

My first time at Écoles Cinéma Club was to see Frances Ha, one of my favorite movies of all time, though perhaps a little on the nose for a young, single, female, socially inept, aspiring artist feeling adrift in an unfriendly metropolis. Set mostly in New York, there are a few scenes in Paris—which would emerge as a theme of my viewings.

During a movie musical film festival, I watched An American in Paris for the first time—the 17-minute ballet sequence is breathtaking and historic and apparently cost the studio nearly half a million dollars—and back at Écoles this summer, I ducked out of a thunderstorm to find Midnight in Paris playing (another favorite, though complicated by Woody Allen’s disgusting behavior). Gil’s romanticization of Paris in the rain takes on a new irony when water is still squelching in your shoes.

There was no feeling more magical to me than seeing the city—now my city—on screen in the same films that I’d worshipped for years, dreaming of someday living the very life I finally had. It re-centered me, reminding me that I would so much rather be disillusioned and insecure—and a whole maelstrom of other emotions, both positive and negative—in Paris than at home. (My brother remarked recently that he knows it’s time to bring a trip to an end when he realizes he actually would rather be dealing with the same problems at home. I think that’s a wise litmus test.)

Now, in a more familiar city but with few friends nearby, I’ve found myself falling back on the old comfort. Alamo Drafthouse, Austin’s homegrown cinema chain, reduces all ticket prices to $7 on Tuesdays, which I first discovered after paying full price for a screening of Theater Camp on a Thursday. (I think it could be my favorite release of the year, so it was worth it. Now streaming on Hulu!)

This week, I went to see Dumb Money, a star-studded comedy about the 2021 Game Stop stock scandal. My friend Emma works for one of the movie’s producers, so I went mostly to support her and to get myself out of the apartment. I ended up having a ridiculously good time—no prior knowledge of the stock market required.

I didn’t know if she would be credited, but I decided to at least watch for the Ryder Pictures logo at the end. Naturally, it felt like the credits took ten minutes; they were thanking craft services before the production companies. The poor Alamo Drafthouse employees were waiting patiently to clean up before the next screening. Succumbing to the awkwardness, I got up from my seat—but, having come so far, I lingered in the doorway waiting for the screen to go black before calling it a night.

Sure enough, there she was. I nearly dropped my phone in excitement, but I managed to get a picture as the credits rolled. On my way out, I apologized profusely and explained that my friend had helped make the movie. They congratulated me on her behalf.

And then, of course, the proshot of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour hit theaters. Just like for the real tour, I had to wait in an online queue to reserve tickets months in advance, and I still couldn’t get a seat until Saturday. Alamo Drafthouse, known for its strict age policy and zero tolerance for talking or texting, publicly announced a loosening of these rules for Swifties. There were themed drinks (“Ranch Water On My Guitar,” “Prosecco Problems”) and merch packs, including light-up wands, available for purchase.

I opted to smuggle in a homemade prickly pear margarita in my water bottle, and I sang and danced along in my seat for the entire three-hour film. I can’t comment at the moment about the fact that “The Archer” was cut from the setlist because the emotions are still fresh, but I will say that the surprise acoustic song choices very nearly made up for this grave omission.

As always, Taylor Swift has a way of crystallizing my thoughts. This was an altogether unique moviegoing experience, but it made me realize why the pastime has been meaningful to me all along. During “Cruel Summer,” the second song of the film, a group of three girls—each no more than 10 years old and dressed for the occasion in sparkly sets—made their way tentatively at first to the narrow area between the first row of seats and the screen. With mounting confidence, they started dancing along to the music.

Following their lead, more and more young girls got up from their seats, and by the chorus of “Love Story” a few songs later, they were all holding hands and turning in one big circle. It wouldn’t be the last time I cried that night, watching them so quickly overcome self-consciousness and difference to revel in our collective joy.

Even in a less interactive screening, it’s this attitude that draws me to the movies. When the lights dim in the theater, no one can tell if you’re sitting alone, nor does anyone have reason to care. We all enter into a tacit agreement, an acknowledgement that everyone has just as much right to their seat as the person next to them has reason for their own. We laugh together at the same punchlines and cry at the right moments, too. I mean—sorry, I can’t stop myself—in the infamous words of Nicole Kidman, we come to this place for magic. Somehow heartbreak feels good in a place like this.

I think I might spring for the Alamo unlimited pass for the last few months of this year. The list of movies I want to see keeps growing: Dicks the Musical, Anatomy of a Fall, Killers of the Flower Moon, What Happens Later, The Holdovers, Saltburn, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Poor Things, Eileen, Anyone But You, Ferrari. I’ll probably even hate-watch Wonka. There aren’t enough Tuesdays left in the year, and besides, the thing would pay for itself. This, I can justify.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

If you need further convincing to watch Frances Ha, this monologue will rip your heart out and stomp on it:

Here is a playlist of songs about, inspired by, or featured in movies (thanks to my divas Caitlin and Mary Shannon for their help):

I wish I could also include this specific rendition of “Being Alive,” were it on Spotify:

Here’s Caitlin as the most perfect AMC Nicole Kidman for Halloween last year:

And finally, I’d like to share with you a bit of movie magic. In 2009, Hugh Jackman was chosen to host the Oscars. After a string of comedians, a “song-and-dance man” as host was out of left field, and he didn’t exactly have an easy job of it. Besides the economic catastrophe affecting America at the time, there were no real blockbusters among the nominees.

The performance you’ll see below was famously rehearsed with full tech only once, as the stars were already walking the red carpet right outside. One of the head writers literally constructed the sets from cardboard, super glue, and the occasional milk jug. At their one rehearsal, they all realized there was no way Jackman could fit his head into each of the cut-outs for the Benjamin Button bit in time with the lyrics. He just declared he would have to move faster; there was nothing else to be done. You’ll notice he breaks character a few times as he navigates the enormous task he and his writers had set—before crescendoing into one of the most iconic moments in awards show history and receiving a well-deserved standing ovation.

The number introduced the musical duo of Jackman and Anne Hathaway, who would return to the stage three years later to claim an Academy Award for her role as Fantine in Les Misérables. And the idea for a movie musical starring Hugh Jackman as P. T. Barnum originated in these rehearsals, as the writers (one of whom would go on to write the screenplay for The Greatest Showman) watched Hugh rise to the occasion with boundless enthusiasm.

Enjoy, and we’ll talk more on Wednesday.