‘Paul & Paulette Take A Bath’ director on crafting his Venice Critics’ Week debut “outside of the system”

Lee Miller and Winston Churchill are (indirectly) to thank for the kernel of the idea that inspired UK filmmaker Jethro Massey’s debut feature, Paul & Paulette Take A Bath, which is premiering in Critics’ Week at this year’s Venice film festival. 

The dark comedy follows a young American photographer and an acerbic French woman with a taste for the macabre. A chance encounter on a Parisian street turns into a game involving reenacting scenes of notorious crimes from bygone eras at the places they unfurled.

“I saw a post on a friend’s Facebook feed of this chap, he was in a big house in England where Winston Churchill had taken his baths, and he took a picture of himself in Winston Churchill’s bathtub, which reminded me of this quite famous image of [American photojournalist] Lee Miller in Adolf Hitler’s bathtub,” Massey explains.

“There was something disturbing about it. Why would she take a photo of herself in Hitler’s bath? It was the day Hitler committed suicide [in a Berlin bunker] that she happened to be there [at Hitler’s abandoned apartment]. It felt there was something to explore about these places where bad things happened, or linked to bad people. We all have that fascination… but why are we so fascinated?”

UK-born, Paris-based Massey describes Paul & Paulette as “handmade, a completely out of the system film”. He self-financed through profits from his work on commercials, music videos and corporate films via his company Film Fabric.

He moved to Paris around 20 years ago to chase his dreams of working in cinema. His first job was in an English pub. However, he found ways to get onto French sets and “learn the French film language, making coffee”. At the same time, YouTube was taking off, providing a platform for Massey to hone his shooting and editing skills. 

While he had previously gone through France’s CNC for funding for short films and documentaries, he decided against it for his first feature.

“It’s where my projects have gone to die,” he reflects. “I don’t think my ideas are quite what the system is looking for. It’s great the amount of support there is in France for the arts, but it becomes a monolith of what gets made, and what gets financed. I think it’s important to defend that ground outside of the system as well.”

What Massey had built up was lots of boots-on-the-ground experience of shooting in France. “I live in Paris, and I’ve made my living organising shoots for people who come from outside France to shoot in France, line producing, organising locations and crew.”

The writing process began around 2018 and the six-week shoot kicked off in July 2022 in Paris, with French-American actor Jérémie Galiana and French star Marie Benati in the title roles.

The film’s evocative soundtrack came from Marc Tassell – a Brit who had been living in Paris for 40 years and had done voiceover for a short film Massey worked on over a decade ago. Tassell sent over some of his music, which was “so weird and dark and poetic. I thought, I can’t use that now, but it’s useful for something”. 

Ten years later, when Massey had the idea for Paul & Paulette Take A Bath, he knew who to turn to, with Massey writing the script while listening to a Tassell playlist. For the film’s pivotal scene in a bathtub, an echo of the famous Lee Miller photograph, he once again turned to Tassell – helpfully also a painter and decorator – to build it.

Most of the film was shot on location, with Massey securing some difficult “yesses” to shoot in usually off-limits locations, such as the cell where Marie Antoinette was held, in La Conciergerie. 



“A lot of it was taking the time to chat to people,” recalls Massey. ”With La Conciergerie, the name [of the official responsible for granting filming] looked like an English name, I called him up, and the accent sounded English. I spent about an hour and a half on the phone with him, talking about Marie Antoinette, why she’s so controversial, why they don’t let people film in there. I said, We’re just treating it as a museum, we’re not changing the space. It’s knowing how to treat people in Paris – often people say no first.”

Finding his way

“When I was in post-production, I had no idea what I was doing with the film,” he recalls. He headed to the European Film Market and Cannes Marche in search of answers, and ended up knocking on the door of Ariane Buhl and her Paris-based festival strategy agency, The Right Ones.

Buhl boarded the project and  Massey lauds her as his “secret weapon” for landing the film at Venice. Paris-based Loco Films represents the title for sales.

For his next project, Massey would like to find creative collaborators, and he hopes the Venice spot will open some doors. “I didn’t have a creative producer I could bounce things off of; for the next one, I want to find that support a little more,” he says.

Massey is developing a second feature, a folk horror inspired by 19th-century photography, for which he has completed the second draft of a script. He is on the lookout in Venice for writing and producing partners for future projects and is keen to step back from the producing side.

“Directing is the main thing I want to do. I would love to find writing collaborators,” he says. “I have become a producer out of necessity. If I’ve got a project, it’s the only way to make it happen. I would love to find people I can work with on that. I have no desire to produce other people’s [projects]. I’ve got so much love and respect for producers – it’s a thankless task.”

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