Vive la France!

Strangely, after years of being a confirmed anglophile (Absolutely Fabulous! Britpop! Fish & chips! Shakespeare!) I’ve switched allegiances. I’ve gone francophile.

I just finished reading Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon. I’m sloooowly learning,via podcast, to speak French, which, if it truly is the language of love, I sound like a 40-year-old virgin reciting it. I even bought a copy of Paris Match to help me in my comprehension, figuring gossip is gossip–a truly international language.

Why French? Why now? Who knows! I’d been meaning to study Italian, but the farthest I got was learning the colors and numbers while playing Uno with my friend Uma. I suppose I could have studied French in high school. But I didn’t. No Spanish, either, even though I lived in Florida. Nope, while the uber-nerds fast-tracked for Ivy League glory were all learning Russian and Japanese, I studied German for three years along with the cybergeeks, ROTC kids, and the occasional burn-out chick. (There’s a fifty-fifty chance the every guy in that class has either become a computer programmer or serial killer. Time to check myspace!) Three years of Herr Hedrick, with acoustic guitar in hand, leading the class in a rousing version of “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” auf deutsch. All those Aryan children in our outdated 1970’s textbook, lounging around the Black Forest or the Tiergarten in polyester, drinking spezis and carrying out impossibly oversimplified conversations so that we could grasp German grammar and all its many cases. But I digress.

Now, here I am, slowly grappling with French as Alexa, my disembodied podcast pedagogue, alternately dismissive and overly humble, leads me on. Wish me luck. Or should I say, bonne chance.

J’adore Paris, Je T’aime

Film recommendation time! I don’t normally, because my tastes usually differ from, well, most people, and really, I can find enjoyment in virtually everything (Spiderman 3! Fun!). Occasionally, though, I’ll put on my discerning pants and rally around a movie like Paris, Je T’aime. It’s a mosaic of shorts, all shot in different arrondissements of Paris by eighteen directors, including Wes Craven, the Coen Brothers, Tom Tykwer and Alfonso Cuaron, and featuring everyone from Elijah Wood and Nick Nolte to Gena Rowlands, Miranda Richardson and the luminous Juliette Binoche. All the five minute sections are about love, but they are as varied as the nature of love itself. Or something. Anyway!

The film, while at times uneven, is on the whole entrancing. A love letter to Paris and to love itself. Fuck, I even liked the mime. And I hate mimes!

The most affecting, by far, was Alexander (Sidways) Payne’s, which features a dowdy, middle-aged American tourist who narrates her visit to the City of Light in stilted, classroom-recitation French. It was the one section of the film that managed to convey both la joie et la tristesse [feel free to correct my terrible vocab] of love.

Intrigued? Watch the trailer below.

If you likey, I’ve posted Tykwer’s piece, featuring Natalie Portman, after the jump (the sound is shitty, but it was either post the one with English subtitles, spanish subtitles, or none at all–English won).