French romance

In her survey of Paris as Hollywood shorthand for romance (“Paris Gets a Love Story It Deserves,” July 4), Kristin Hohenadel mentions that in “French Kiss,” Meg Ryan’s Kate looks for the Eiffel Tower throughout the film but repeatedly just misses seeing it. Hohenadel observes that this “might have been a nod to the ubiquity of the Eiffel Tower as sole geographic locator in American-in-Paris movies.”

When I saw “French Kiss,” I assumed that this device was also a gentle homage to “Playtime” (1967), the brilliant Jacques Tati’s wry commentary on modern Paris, in which tourists seeking the picture-postcard version of the city never encounter any actual Parisian landmarks, but only the reflections of historical monuments in the glass doors of midcentury office buildings.

Marilyn Young

Los Angeles