Dressed in wandering - Paris, Texas
Ioana Satmari • 3/14/2025Can you reduce a person to just a point? Can the focal point of a film’s beginning be reduced to just one person? Can the feeling of belonging be divided into colors?
Built on the quiet, worn, and slightly shabby foundation of Jacques Tati’s films, but with his hints of red here and there, Paris, Texas, directed by Wim Wenders, strikes you through its layered images. What lingers, however, is an inner, sens(e)-ational image.
You can’t reduce a film to just how its looks. Or to just what it shows you. Just as you can’t truly know something by a single aspect, this film hides within what it shows, but also lays itself bare in how it looks. It hides because all its colors whisper what you should feel. For me, it made everything revolve around the purest soul in the film, the one that sometimes says things too heavy, too wise, and too honest to be fully understood: The Child.
Although the film doesn’t begin or end with him, everything indirectly resonates with and revolves around his dance. The child is encouraged to make his own decisions, to choose his true parents: those who gave him life and to whom he’s biologically connected, or those who raised him and with whom he spent most of his life. Yet he’s left helpless in the face of all four sides. Each one claims to step back to give him the space to choose, pretending not to influence his decision. But they all do more than that. One runs away. Another cannot choose between being fair and loving. One loves too much and cannot let go. And one thought didn’t love enough and left too soon. Now, the child with four parents is, in fact, alone.
The film begins with the child’s biological father, Travis (Harry Dean Stanton), wandering through the desert in search of water. He has been missing for four years, during which he has simply walked. In the first frame, he wears a red cap and a shabby suit. As he moves away from us, the camera, the color of his suit dissolves into the hues of the desert. We recognize him only by the red cap, transforming him into a distant dot. Ever more distant. The frames are dominated by this smoldering red, a dark yet vibrant blue, as if seen through sunglasses, and sandy tones. Everything is slightly desaturated and yet strikingly alive.
Travis reconnects with his brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell), the current and present father of his son. Or rather, he is saved. The frames grow darker. We see how the night looks like. From the warm nostalgia of the opening, we’re now pierced by green, red, and white neon lights that sharpen the ties between the characters. Walt brings Travis to his home. To his wife. And to his son, Hunter (Hunter Carson). That is, to his and his son. Or rather, to his son and the son of the other him. Or perhaps the other’s son and his son? I don’t know.
At first, the child rejects his biological father. Then, as we spend more days, and ever more nights with them, the child draws closer to Travis. This darkness, sharpening what we’re meant to feel, also sharpens the relationships between the characters. It’s as if the night holds the power to bring us closer. As if the dryness of the neon lights forces us to truly see each other. To see our wrinkles. And I don’t mean the ones on our faces.
The story continues with the search for the biological mother, Jane (Nastassja Kinski). The parents who raised Hunter for the second half of his life feel compelled to step back. But they still don’t claim their “rights” as his worthy parents. They don’t consider themselves entitled. He’s not their child. He’s a borrowed child.
Travis finds Jane. Their first encounter is mostly silent but haunted by the same colors that suggest connection: fluffy pinks, fiery oranges, and shimmering yellows. Their second meeting is gentler. As Travis confesses his journey and admits his mistakes, the colors fade. There’s a contrast between the two and their surroundings. Although both are dressed in dark tones, they exist in two different worlds. The conversation ends with Travis telling Jane that their son is in a hotel room and that she can meet him if she wants to.
Jane goes. Outside, it’s dark. The room is lit by a harsh white bulb, The Big Light. She wears black and iridescent dark green. Travis watches from the parking lot, enveloped in a mix of warm sunset hues and the harsh lights of the city. He’s torn. He knows he cannot mend what was between him and Jane, but he doesn’t want to leave his son again.
We’re left between those colors: the soft hues of separation and the astringent tones of entanglement. Beneath these colors lies a hidden story. A story about how we interpret what belongs to us, or whether this concept of belonging exists at all. You cannot own a person. Sometimes, we don’t even seem to own ourselves. Does love belong to those who deserve it most? And if so, how can we measure that? At the midpoint of your life, who do you feel closer to: those to whom you owe your physical life but whom you can’t remember, or those to whom you owe your emotional life? Do you owe anyone anything?
You can’t judge a film by its colors, I said. But I was struck by how, through its colors alone, Paris, Texas created a parallel visual language. It reminds me of the same harmonious sharpness in Her, directed by Spike Jonze, and the soft haziness of colors in Lost in Translation, directed by Sofia Coppola, two films connected by the people who made them.
The story of so-called free choice, yet constrained by too much restrained love or uncontainable love, stifles the true choice that must be made. The colors clash. We cannot live solely in light or darkness.