Perfect Strangers

Olivia Rossi is a 38-year-old writer spending the summer in Paris. Her literary agent, Estelle Perkins, is letting Olivia stay in her apartment on the top floor of an “elegant” building to write and recover from an unspecified trauma. There’s a courtyard through which Olivia can see and hear an attractive neighbor couple, Gigi and Gaspard, have sex. Olivia is jealous.

At a sidewalk cafe, Cafe Blanc, Olivia feels attacked by Paris’s romantic atmosphere, and she notices a handsome artist, James Blackwood. Kelly Hanes, Olivia’s close friend, calls her, and they joke about sex, Kelly’s hectic domestic life, and her husband, who works for the FBI.

James approaches Olivia, and his blue eyes mesmerize her. She combats her attraction by telling him that she’s waiting for someone, and she doesn’t want him to draw her. James calls Olivia’s eyes “haunted,” and as she leaves, she suspects three younger women nearby are giggling at her.

In the morning, Olivia hears Gigi and Gaspard having sex again. The traumatic event in her recent past has diminished her sex drive but meeting James yesterday restored it.