Summer in the City

Cali is at a hotel on the Amalfi coast with her husband, Pierre. They’re on the latest of a long string of vacations, as they are wealthy and don’t work. Elle is looking after Cali’s home renovations mainly because Cali is pregnant and insists the stress of the renovations is not good for the baby. Elle is indifferent toward Pierre because she associates him with Cali making the same mistakes their mother warned them about; after meeting Pierre, Cali gave up her aspirations of getting a master’s degree in art history. Elle blames herself for Cali going down the “wrong” path, losing sight of her ambitions. Their phone conversation reveals Cali knows nothing about Elle’s anonymous screenwriting career; she believes that Elle is a movie critic. Elle has done nothing to dissuade this assumption because Cali regularly speaks with their father, and Elle doesn’t want him to know anything about her life.

Elle goes to her favorite coffee shop and buys her usual blueberry scone. Parker startles her when he arrives, almost causing her to drop the scone, which she tells him are only made on weekends and sell out quickly. Parker enlists Elle’s help as his fake girlfriend, asking her to attend a monthly basketball game he has with his friends and their girlfriends.