Seduction in the City

In 1852 Aristide Boucicaut, a visionary of consumerism, created his French version of an "American" dream in Paris: He opened the first department store in the world - Le Bon Marché. Through interviews with historians and psychologists, visualizations, archival materials and staged reconstructions of events, this moving picture, The Ladies' Paradise (named after the novel by Emile Zola and inspired by Le Bon Marché itself) analyzes the social impact of the birth of the "cathedral of consumerism". Shopping in a sacred atmosphere of luxury, where all material temptations are in the same place, greatly contributed to the disclosure of obsessions –consumerism based not on need, but on pleasure, and it also stood at the beginnings of the emancipation of women. It should be noted that both effects are largely overlapping and are accompanied by side effects, such as the new disease, shopaholism. It has also brought about the standardization of sizes in clothes, discounts, the introduction of the four fashion seasons, kleptomania, and last but not least, the opportunity to use the first women’s public restrooms. The arrival of shopping, as we know it today, is fraught with paradox: after freeing themselves from their spouses, women are governed by a new master – the product they must have. (Academia Film Olomouc)