This paper looks at a selection of recent mainstream American films set in contemporary Paris [The Truth about Charlie, (Jonathan Demme, 2003), Le Divorce (James Ivory, 2003), French Kiss (Lawrence Kasdan, 1995)]. The discussion will show how these films use Paris as a standardised backdrop to easy cultural cliché, but will argue that the films are more complex and more cinematically interesting than the generic ‘American in Paris’ format may first suggest. It will reveal strategies used by the various filmmakers to show their familiarity with respected French filmmaking practices and figures (Lamorisse’s Le Ballon Rouge and Truffaut’s Tirez sur le pianiste are just two of the major intertextual references employed), and will consider the question of how the films are served by the casting of major French, as well as American, star actors. It will suggest that the films display a hybridity that is unusual in mainstream Hollywood filmmaking, a hybridity that challenges (while appearing to simply replicate) established screen mythologies of Parisian/French identity.