But now we notice something new: Our reprimands are turning inward. Haven’t we made the same mistakes as Julie? Wasn’t there a first love—or a second, or third—the dismal ashes of which still conceal a glowing ember? It’s a challenge if the person you love deeply is color blind. What if they see everything as one shade or other of the color blue? How will you share the multitude of vivid colors that surround you? But if the person you love also suffers from an apparent emotional blindness, the challenges threaten to become insurmountable; the blueness of everything begins to seep into your soul. Joanne Wodward, Diahann Carrol and Barbara Laage (in a more minor role, albeit soulful and penetrating) all hit their mark with humor, depth and candor. Serge Reggiani's role as the junkie guitar player adds his own set of "blues" to an already spicy mixture of music, love, rejection and pathos. "Satchmo" and company provide a most welcome musical interlude at just the right time to lighten up the plot just a bit! On his way to see Wild Man Moore at the train station, Ram Bowen, a jazz musician living in Paris, encounters a newly arrived tourist named Connie Lampson and invites her to see him perform that night at Club 33. Connie is not interested, but her friend Lillian insists they go see him. After Ram finishes performing with Eddie, a fellow American expatriate, the four of them leave the club in the early morning. When Ram suggests that he and Connie go off to have a private breakfast together, she becomes offended, and Ram is angered at being rejected. However, Lillian, undeterred by Ram's attraction to her friend, convinces him to apologize before pursuing him. The two sleep together while Connie and Eddie continue to walk around Paris.

In place of the travelogue element, we get a lovely scene in which Sidney Poitier (Eddie Cook), and Diahann Carroll (Connie Lampson) stroll around the Bird Market on Île de la Cité. Although they are in love, Eddie is in Paris primarily because Parisians are noted for being colour blind and he is judged solely on his skill as a saxophonist rather than the colour of his skin. Connie, however, is active in the struggle for racial equality and urges Eddie to return with her to the US and stand up to be counted. Rhino Entertainment Company. Manufactured for & marketed by Rhino Entertainment Company, a Warner Music Group Company, 777 S. Santa Fe Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90021

Paris in the civil rights era was a hub of artistic collaboration as well as a kind of political refuge - a destination for American jazz musicians escaping racial prejudice and turbulence at home, finding new creative encounters abroad. The other relationship is more intense (Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were, of course, husband-and-wife offscreen, and this was the fourth time they had appeared together on screen). Newman’s Ram Bowen is both selfish, arrogant and ambitious, with eyes to become a serious composer, and not really prepared to take on Woodward’s Lillian Corning – a divorcee with two children – full time. Throw in a sub-plot about the group’s guitarist Michel “Gypsy” Devigne (Serge Reggiani) – a clear reference to Django Reinhardt – and his heroin addiction, and we’re looking at a fairly rich bouillabaisse, before we even mention the music.

Guests include jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater, film director Bertrand Tavernier, composer Martial Solal, jazz writer Geoff Dyer, historians Kevi Donat and Ginette Vincendeau, bass player Henri Texier and playwright Jake Lamar. The lyrical language weaving it’s journey via the passion for music has left me exhausted; this is not the easy read I was expecting although hints were there which didn’t register. It’s a very American story with references to an early music and literature immersion by the whole of Julie’s family. Not your typical family I expect. Yeh,” broke in Louis, “but that old Sultana wouldn’t let me in, even when I tol’ him none of them ladies had anything Lucille hadn’t got – but better!”First loves only happen once a lifetime, and as such are memorable, for better or worse. In that vein, what could be a more memorable, or magical, experience than finding that love in Paris, a city well known for its romance? For Julie, a 20-year-old music student from a small town in Main, that’s exactly what happened. Furthering her musical talents, and trying to broaden her horizons in a city full of culture, Julie meets Luc, an older man who shares her passionate love of music and art. As the story so often goes, from that moment on, her life was never the same.