A Personal Tour of Paris with a French Actress

Story by Linda Donahue

Virginie Ledoyen, the famous French actress, wants to meet you at the Café de Flore. She wants to tell you all about its history and, with her sultry voice and French accent, she’ll absolutely mesmerize you. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a man or woman, because with the music playing in the background, you might just start crushing on her a little bit. But once Ledoyen sees a handsome stranger, you’d best be prepared to follow her across Saint-Germain-des-Prés, through streets still haunted by the ghosts of Picasso, Apollinaire, Sartre, Beauvoir and Oscar Wilde. That’s just the way she moves—at least on this Soundwalk audio tour.A pioneer in the creation of “audio walks,” Soundwalk has created a unique travel experience for mobile phones—including an iPhone app that incorporates visuals with sound. In fact, Soundwalk draws on sound to establish a new reality, incorporating famous French actors telling fictional stories set to an urban soundtrack. It’s almost like finding yourself as an observer in someone else’s story—a story that just happens to take place in Paris. There’s a start point and an end point. And, in between, you’ll follow along the map route as Ledoyen (and her fellow narrators) tell their stories, pointing out interesting points and history along the way.

There are five hour-long audio vignettes narrated by five actresses. In addition to Ledoyen, Isild Le Besco races around Le Marais in search of her lost walkman, Florence Loiret-Caille searches for her lost lover in Belleville, Lou Doillon leads you on a very sultry (adults-only) tour of the lustful red-light district of PIgalle, while Hélène Fillières travels through time under the arcades of the Palais Royal.

Soundwalk has produced more than 40 tours around the world and collaborated with Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Adidas, and Fauchon, and now they’ve brought the tour to Paris. Drawing inspiration from Baudelaire’s concept of flânerie and the cinema, Soundwalk takes listeners on an intimate voyage into the fictional lives of its narrators—all famous French actresses. It’s a movie without images, and it doesn’t need any since you’re right in the heart of the story. Or, as Ledoyen says, “It’s a way to lose yourself in the life of someone else.”

And Soundwalk is part of the official programming of this year’s Nuit Blanche, the all-night arts festival that starts on October 3rd in Paris. That’s when they’ll launch three exclusive iPhone applications that, for one night only, are free to the public (and are $5.99 after October 4th).  The audio vignettes will be available for download from iTunes: Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Les Marais and Belleville. All five Soundwalks can be purchased in MP3 format at the Soundwalk Store (http://store.soundwalk.com). Soundwalks are available in English and French.