When you’re on a tight budget, the only way to enjoy a trip to Paris from New York is to walk over to 58th street. The Paris Theatre, which has been a staple in this city for over 60 years, charges only $12 a ticket and, for at least an hour, you’re transported to (arguably) the most romantic city in the world.

I walked over to the theater to check out Cheri. (There’s no better cure for solitude and disillusionment then an escape into turn of the century France.)

And what a delightful scandal it was. The plot? Ravishing Lea (Michelle Pfeiffer) is contemplating retirement from her renowned stature as Paris’s most envied seductress to the rich and famous until she is approached by a former courtesan and arch rival and gossip queen, Charlotte Peloux (Kathy Bates), who persuades Lea to teach her 19 year-old son — a bon vivant nicknamed “Cheri” — a thing or two about women. The resulting escapades involve power struggles over sex, money, age and society – and unexpectedly, love itself — as a boy who refuses to grow up collides with a woman who realizes she cannot stay young forever.

With a story-line so close to what I see in New York City’s culture circuit it wasn’t much of a distraction, but it did leave me with the idyllic fantasy that love can be found, revived, and re-gained even in the most unlikely of times and circumstances.

And what a lucky gal I am: I’ll be returning to (The) Paris in September for the much anticipated, Coco Before Chanel.