The company, based in the Paris suburbs, was responsible for building the gallery's infamous entrance -- the Louvre pyramid -- in 1989.

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Widad, a 25-year-old secretary of Algerian origin, notes that when she was a schoolchild in Les Yvelines, in the Paris suburbs, four-fifths of her class were North African and only a handful went on to study for the baccalaureate, the school-leaving certificate that is the essential passport to a university or a reasonable job.

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There are lots of ways for people in the suburbs of Paris, Washington, or New York to get into the city center, including driving.

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The featurette, set in the summertime, brings a mother and daughter from the suburbs of Paris to a vacation apartment that Sylvain manages and pulls them gradually but inexorably into his phlegmatic vortex of chaos.

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