While in a coma after an accident, an American art professor dreams of meeting his soulmate in Paris. Upon waking from the coma, he goes to Paris to discover whether the woman he loves is real or a fantasy.

SYNOPSIS:

Ryan Hollister, a professor of art in Seattle, who has broken up with his fiancée, falls off the roof of his house. While in a coma, he dreams he is in Paris. He sees landscapes morph into Impressionist paintings, has conversations with Degas at the Musée d’Orsay, and meets a French woman named Aurélie, on a Métro train; (she carries a 300-year-old potted grapevine). Though she is resistant at first, they get to know one another, and go on a few dates. On the eve of his asking Aurélie to marry him, while in a pedicab near a Jewish deli, after seeing the Louvre, a bomb goes off. Ryan wakes in a hospital in Seattle, and is told his experiences in Paris were a dream while he was in a coma for twenty-one days. He decides he must go to Paris to see if Aurélie is real or a fantasy. When he arrives in Paris he can’t find Aurélie at the places he experienced in his dream. Despondent, he goes to a bar La Fée Verte (the Green Fairy) and a woman in a green dress tells him she used to know a woman named Aurélie. She takes Ryan to her apartment and gives him a photo of Aurélie. He falls asleep and wakes to find the woman trying to seduce him, and realizes it is Thursday, the same day he and Aurélie met at the Musée d’Orsay in his dream. He goes to the museum but Aurélie is not there. On a rain soaked sidewalk near the museum a woman runs past him and he realizes it is Aurélie because she is carrying a potted grape vine. He follows her down the steps of a Métro station, and arrives moments after a train has departed. The crowd disperses and he sees the back of Aurélie. He walks toward her, and she turns. Aurélie says she has seen him in her dreams.

21 DAYS IN PARIS