One can only guess how my dad found Wandering Hearts (2017).  In case any if what I am about to write interests you in any way, it is available for streaming on Amazon Prime.  If you think it will come up with a little bit of scrolling through the options, then I am afraid you will be disappointed.  Then again, artificial intelligence (AI) populates those lists based on your viewing habits, so maybe you will encounter it without having to use the search engine?  Along those same lines, what does this say about what my dad usually watches?  Beyond this, I am guessing he saw stuff about Paris, which we visited a few years ago, and that is what drew him to the movie.  To be fair, it does have some great shots of familiar sites from the City of Lights, all of which we saw during our trip, including the wonderful view from the Basilica of Sacré Cœur.  Between that and them standing outside of Mont Saint-Michel, there is a little Catholic flavor in the film.  Otherwise, its budget shows throughout most of the proceedings, which somehow makes the experience even more bizarre.

You might be bewildered by the opening shot of Wandering Hearts, particularly if you do not speak French.  Luckily, I understand it fairly well, and I can tell you that the first few minutes are narrated in the language of France by Valerie (Anne Schmitz).  She is reminiscing about a relationship with Ethan (Deva Middleton), a Canadian tourist she had met a few weeks earlier.  As she talks, we see him downcast, making a phone call to her.  How we get to that point is the subject of much of the rest of the movie.  For someone who claims to be staying in France for a few weeks, he seems to have poorly planned his trip.  He arrives with a barely full backpack and a camera, and a complete inability to speak the language.  He is able to make himself understood enough to get to the Eiffel Tower where he commences taking pictures.  Once this is accomplished, he decides it is time to find his way to his hotel, the obviously named Hotel Europe.  Right. Instead of using his smartphone, he asks passersby for directions, and this is how he meets Valerie.  However, when he gets her attention, she accuses him of being a typical American who expects everyone else to know English.  She claims ignorance before walking away.  He seemingly starts wandering the city and miraculously ends up in Montmartre, the arrondissement in which his hotel is located.  He still does not know where it is, so he continues to inquire of strangers.  This leads to the next unlikely occurrence.  The person he subsequently talks to is Isabelle (Isabelle Thomas), who not only knows English but is friends with Valerie.  Regarding the latter, she walks up behind Ethan speaking perfect English.  There are some awkward apologies offered, he for calling her a French jerk, she for not being honest.  He also finally tells her that he is Canadian.  When the topic of his stay comes around, Amanda offers Valerie’s services as a tour guide.  Valerie is initially annoyed by the proposition, but she soon agrees, telling him to meet her at the Tuileries gardens the following morning.  Remember what I said about not using his smartphone a moment ago?  Well, he looks up the landmark’s location on his phone before going to bed.  I suppose there would habe been no film had he done the same for his hotel, but I digress.  Ehtan and Valerie proceed to spend the entire day together, seeing all the sites and taking many pictures.  Her playful energy disarms him, and I guess she is attracted to his quiet handsomeness.  Whatever it is that they see in each other, they admit their feelings by the end of the day and plan to meet again.  Before doing so, since this seems to be turning into some kind of romance, she promises that she does not currently have a boyfriend, and vice versa.  Her reason for getting this out is because she especially hates dishonesty.  With that said, she shows up at his hotel room door in the morning because, of course, she is friends with the clerk in the lobby.  She has come to take him on a surprise trip, wanting to show France to him through her eyes.  Their first stop is Mont Saint-Michel.  It appears the filmmakers did not have permission to film inside its ancient island walls, which is a pity.  Nonetheless, as they sit outside on the sand admiring the abbey at the top of the hill, they kiss for the first time.  She also gets him to agree to visit her home village . . . which is apparently on the complete other side of France, though you would not know this unless you are familiar with French geography.  At any rate, she wants to take him to meet her friends and parents.  While he hesitates a moment, his enthusiasm for her is such that he happily agrees.  Though she is angry upon their arrival when Brigitte (Florence Prunier), her mother, tells Valerie that there will be a big dinner, Ethan takes it all in stride.  I am not sure we see any of Valerie’s friends, but there are a lot of old people, which might explain why they decide to take a walk on their own.  It is supposed to be night, but it looks like the budget did not allow for the right cameras.  All the same, they make love under the “stars” before waking up the next morning in bed back at her parents’ house.  During another promenade, he tells her that he has decided to stay with her in Paris.  She is ecstatic about this news and waits while he makes the necessary phone calls.  Because his mother tells him that his ex-girlfriend, Amanda (Chelsey Reist), has been calling, he decides to phone Amanda.  Valerie picks up in the middle of their heated conversation and assumes that he had been lying about having a girlfriend.  Heartbroken, Valerie leaves him to return to Paris on her own.  Somehow, he is able to make it back there, too, but by train.  Before departing the country, he leaves a message on her phone asking for forgiveness and saying he will wait for her for the next few days at the place they met.  Sadly, she never shows and the film ends.  Just kidding! The opposite happens.

I had the opposite reaction to Wandering Hearts than one might expect given its setting and happy conclusion.  I love a classic boy-meets-girl flick, and I love Paris even more.  I was even charmed to a certain degree by Valerie’s demeanor, even if she did overreact when she learned about Amanda.  He cannot control the behavior of ex-girlfriends, Valerie made a poor assumption about Amanda, and Valerie should have given him the opportunity to explain.  Further, this is why relationships take time to build.  Put differently, had I been Ethan’s mother, I would have tried harder to talk some sense into my son.  On the other hand, Valerie makes an interesting metaphorical argument for following your heart in such cases.  It happens while they are taking pictures around Paris.  At one point, she takes his camera but is unfamiliar with the older film model with no screen on the back.  Without a monitor, she wonders whether the photograph will be any good.  He has a professional response pertaining to the eye of the photographer, but I had a Catholic reaction to this concept.  Faith is something we cannot see through the convenience of a screen.  We do not always know that what we are aiming for is the right path, and it is even less clear if we do not look for it through the lens of God.  Please forgive the metaphors, but it works for this discussion because Ethan’s camera and his use of it works for the purposes of Faith.  If we have a professional’s knowledge of God, or at least working towards such a level, then we can trust more in what we are doing.  It will not always be perfect.  Sometimes there will be bad images, like the misunderstanding between Ethan and Valerie or sin.  With true contriteness comes, hopefully, learning from our mistakes and growing deeper in our relationships, including with God.

As you can see, I have a complicated relationship with Wandering Hearts.  I want to be more forgiving of its amateurish presentation, but the story is also nothing original.  It does have some nice snapshots of Paris, but you can find the same images in other, better films, like Midnight in Paris (2011).  Hence, I leave this one up to you.