Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it. Maybe we can all satisfy our yearnings for France, until we get there again. I'm busy preparing for our French visitor who is now spending two nights. I have a dinner party set up for Monday evening and decided nothing will be more American than going out for Mexican tonight. Our young friend Nicolas has watched his parents play host to Earl and me many times. I hope we make him feel equally welcome. Here's a picture from one of our visits to Nicolas' parents in Nantes. The French make it look so effortless to host people.
The table is set beautifully.
The cheese cart is ready for after dinner.
The teenage boys have hearty appetites and impeccable manners.
Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it. Maybe we can all satisfy our yearnings for France, until we get there again.
A few
weeks ago, I wrote about our bottles of wine that we bring home from France,
but, of course, we bring home other special things too.
When Grace came home from France in December 2011, she
brought several bars of soap that she bought in the market at Aix en Provence.
The soaps were 1 euro each. I loved using soap from France. She brought a
variety of scents and I felt so sad when they were all gone.
Tucker went to France in March with his classmates. I
begged him to buy soaps in the market, but he refused. Instead, he bought
himself a $129 watch from Les Galeries Lafayette.
Then, last month, as I was cleaning out the closet, I
found a bar of soap that Grace had brought back.
What joy!
I hopped in the shower to enjoy the latest soap, but
quickly called my husband to come take a photo.
As you can see, the soap scent is peach, and I loved discovering a piece of France hiding in my closet.
I can't wait until I get to France again. I'm going to load up on fabulous soaps.
Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.
Maybe we can all satisfy our yearnings for France, until we get there again.
As obsessed as I am with France, how is it possible that I sometimes miss movies set in France? I happened upon 2 Days in Paris with Julie Delpy and Adam Goldberg. The film came out in 2007. Most of it is in English but it includes subtitles for the portions in French. When the film began with a couple on a night train from Venice, I stopped and wondered if this was another Julie Delpy/Ethan Hawke movie like Before Sunrise and Before Sunset where a French woman connects with an American man. But Adam Goldberg plays a very different character than Ethan Hawke. Delpy directed this one and really focused on some hilarious stereotypes of the French.
The couple, Marion and Jack, are at the end of a vacation in Venice and plan to spend two days at her apartment in Paris before they return to New York. Jack is a Woody Allen-type character, paranoid about dirt and whining about a lot.
Marion's apartment is upstairs from her parents' apartment. The parents have been cat-sitting for Marion's chunky cat Jean-Luc. Marion fights with her mother who has fed the cat foie gras while she watched him.
The Parisian family greets Jack with a luncheon where rabbit is served and the father makes a show of eating the head. Jack, of course, is appalled because he had a pet bunny as a kid. The parents and Marion speak French quite heatedly in front of Jack, talking about him with him not even realizing it. Subtitles let the viewer in on the joke. I think that made me laugh because I've been in that situation before.
Marion runs into old flames who want to win her back and flirt outrageously, saying blunt, sexual things that Americans would never say, again, in front of the boyfriend since he doesn't speak French.
Jack is appalled by an overtly sexual art exhibit at Marion's father's art gallery and feels out of place at a French party, while Marion is in her element.
Another funny moment is when Jack realizes that Marion's mother has ironed his jeans, leaving neat seams down the front. I always wonder about the French and ironing. Almost every French person I know has a woman who comes in to iron for the family. I figure that's because they don't dry clothes in the dryer so things feel rough unless they're ironed. (Please tell me if you think my theory is wrong.)
Paris itself didn't star as much in the film as it did in Midnight in Paris, but simply viewing streets, flower markets, and metro stops was enough to make me yearn for France again.
This is definitely a movie I enjoyed and I'd recommend it.
Thanks for playing along. I hope you'll come back on Wednesday and Thursday when I review Seduction by MJ Rose and interview her too. Plus, there's a giveaway.
Also, my book The Summer of France is being reviewed on several blogs and you can check the schedule on the top right of my blog under France Book Tours.
Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy
of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us
your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie?
Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a
pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We
can take it.
Maybe we can all satisfy our yearnings for France, until we get
there again.
This week, I finished reading a book set in France and watched a French movie.
I can't recommend the book too highly.
The book, A Chateau in Provence by Charles Wood, was such a strange title. The book truly had nothing to do with a chateau, but I thought the premise was fun. Some Americans vacationing in France get caught up in intrigue over a painting stolen by the Nazis and never returned. As a matter of fact, my own novel, The Summer of France, deals with some Nazi-stolen art as well, so, of course, I thought the idea was great. In spite of the good plot, the characters were not fleshed out enough so the reader could relate to them, and some basic editing would have helped the book. Also, when writing with a different language included, like French, it's always a good idea to check and re-check to get it right. Since I'm an English teacher, some basic punctuation issues, like misplaced commas, bugged me too.
Here's an excerpt from the book on page 63:
He tried the knob. he not only hadn't closed the door, he hadn't even locked it. He pushed it open and went to the side of the bed, knelt on one knee and reached his hand into the area between mattress and spring and felt the comforting bulk of his wallet. He felt relieved.
The next thing Sam felt was an immense explosion in the back of his head followed by brilliant firewords behind his eyes. The room spun and tilted sidewise. His consciousness slipped away like a medieval ghost gliding out the door.
The book skipped back and forth from different characters points of view and the reader didn't get a chance to know any of them enough to really care about them.
This also counts toward the meme Books on France 2013 at Words and Peace. I've vowed to read 12 books set in France and this is my second. It counts even if I'm not crazy about it, right?
We also watched a French movie Saturday evening -- Tous les Matins du Monde with Gerard DePardieu. The film was based on the life of the composer Sainte Colombe. It tells the story of the eccentric composer in mourning for the wife who dies young. He refuses to play at court
because he feels the music is more important than recognition from the king. The composer is left to raise two young daughters, and he teaches them both to play the cello as well. Then a young man, Marin Marais, comes to learn the cello from Sainte Colombe and one of the daughters falls for him. It's this young man who later becomes the DePardieu character.
Like many French movies, this one leaves a lot of questions. The opening defintely made me uncomfortable. Probably the first 15 minutes was a close-up shot on Depardieu as he began to tell his story. I just wanted to look away, but I had to keep looking to read the English translation.
The movie did hold my attention through the end even though I was very tired. And some things seems so French, like the daughter pulling her breast out of her blouse to offer herself to Marais. Or the line about the daughters growing up and that they now had to wear a pad between their legs because they bled monthly. I just thought that was something that wouldn't have been voiced in an American film. Maybe we're too squeamish, or maybe it's obvious.
The music throughout the film was lovely and full of emotion.
The movie took me to 17th century France for a short time, although the life seemed hard and fairly joyless. The composer took joy only in the moments that the ghost of his wife appeared to him, and (spoiler alert) the daughter dies young as well. The reviews of this on Amazon are breathless, so I suppose I should assume I didn't gather the true meaning.
Enjoyable, not a "must see."
Earl works evenings, so most evenings I'm home alone or chaperoning Tucker and his girlfriend.
On Earl's two evenings off a week, we try to find something fun to do. Tuesday night, we walked down to the library and borrowed a couple of movies then went to a local coffee shop. We sat at tables along the sidewalk and enjoyed the beautiful September night.
When we had walked home, we watched one of the movies. Made in 1995, French Kiss with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline is a great romantic comedy for anyone who loves France, like I do.
Earl had never seen it before, and I only fell asleep for a small part of the movie. Kevin Kline plays a Frenchman, Luc, who is a thief. I wondered why they had chosen him to play a Frenchman and when I searched it online, I found that the role was originally written for Gerard Depardieu. I like Depardieu, but I can't imagine Meg Ryan falling for him. Kline has since played other French-speaking parts. The plot is that Meg Ryan is petrified of flying so she doesn't go overseas with her fiance. He meets a French woman and falls in love. She gets up her nerve to fly over and win back the fiance, but meets Luc on the plane. He hides some contraband in her bag and they are thrown together.
Although I love France, I still prefer to watch American movies made in France. The problem is that comedies in France aren't generally funny. Someone almost always dies. But the other movie we watched on Earl's night off was French, billed as a romantic comedy. We were prepared for bodies to start stacking up as the hilarity ensued.
The movie was called Heartbreaker with Vanessa Paradis and Romain Duris, French actors. The premise is that Duris plays Alex who, with his sister and brother-in-law, runs an elaborate business to break up couples. The examples they gave were a brother who paid them to break up his sister and her lame boyfriend, and a father who hired them to keep his daughter from marrying someone boring.
The beginning was fun as Alex and his crew went to elaborate lengths to convince a woman that she deserved more than the man who preferred to stay by the pool and watch a wet t-shirt contest.
Of course, Alex meets his match when he is asked to stop the marriage of Juliette, an independent woman, to a British philanthropist. Alex takes the job because he needs the money, even though it goes against his principles. He usually only breaks up couples who are unhappy or a bad fit. Juliette puts up quite a fight, which makes Alex fall in love with her. I won't tell you how it ends, but surprisingly, no one dies, which makes it 'ilarious, as the French say.
Both movies were full of lovely French scenes.
On Tuesday I posted the introduction to a book I had started and was loving. Well, I've finished it and please, let me warn you that you should not read it unless you are feeling so, so happy that you need something to make you feel miserable. As a matter of fact, you may feel guilty about being so happy and you immediately need to pick up this book to bring you down so strangers can stand to be around you again. Otherwise, skip the pretty language and the hopeful blurb on the back.
I know. What was I thinking? It's French. Even their comedies are depressing. But the book jacket said Mathilde and Thibault were two lonely people in Paris. And we get to see that loneliness, that misery building block by block. Have things taken a turn for Mathilde? No. Back down again. Maybe Thibault will meet her in the subway. No, they missed each other. The psychic promised her life would change on the day the entire book takes place. But the blurb on the book jacket left the reader hopeful when it said, "a lonesome city... But what if these two could save each other?"
It does say "what if..." which apparently in France means, they can't and they won't. So if you got your hopes up like I did, well, perhaps you skipped the part about it being French.
Most of the book has a great languid quality about it. Yet, it made me anxious. Nothing much happens except lots of angst from both characters. And (SPOILER ALERT) in the end, they do see each other on the subway, look at each other, and when he looks up again, she has exited. He exits at the next stop and the book ends.
I kept reading because I thought something in their lives might actually get better. Who wants the characters to walk away miserable? Apparently, the French do.
So if you're incredibly happy, read this book. Or, if you're already feeling miserable and you want to feel like you have company, read this book.
Yesterday I was kvetching about parenthood, and after my 18-year-old snuggled up to me on the couch last night, showing how sorry he is for disappointing me, I'm feeling more optimistic about the future of my children. (Allow me to be delusional) So I'd like to turn the mood around from parenting struggles to something that makes me happy. I got a new coffee cup. I love the big bowls of coffee that the French use in the morning. When we were in Paris with the kids in 2006, Earl and Spencer bought me a Paris cup from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Washing dishes recently, I dropped a bowl on top of the coffee cup and chipped it. I thought I could continue drinking my morning coffee and milk in the cup though. I would just drink from the other side. I'm left handed, so it would make sense that I'd drink my coffee left handed. But what I found out when I started paying attention, is that I drink my coffee right handed. This weekend, I ventured into Sur La Table. I'd like to have one of everything in that store, but I settled for a new oversized coffee cup. Of course, I couldn't come home empty handed for my husband so I bought him a present. See if you can guess what it is.
My French is so bad now that it's painful. I feel like I'm speaking with a totally American accent and I'm not using the correct verbs, and aaaaaargh! There was a time,granted it was 25 years ago, when I could speak French present, passe compose, conditional, future, no problem. I could even understand the subtleties of some French jokes or plays on words. No longer. I'm fine when I limit myself to ordering in a restaurant or buying souvenir tshirts. I can even request directions and nod my head intelligently when the French person waves her hand, gesticulating this way and that: "A droite et encore a droite..." But I don't really understand enough to find the place she is pointing out to me. Visiting friends requires a more sophisticated level of French that has so far deserted me at this point. I find myself laughing at stories that are serious and looking sad at jokes!
We limit our conversations, which of course limits our friendship. We speak in French and English of all the children and cousins and friends. Trying to catch up on everyone's lives, but always lagging a little behind. I know how to say, "I don't understand" but I don't know how to say, "I just don't get it."
This week, my house is free of a French accent. That's because Marie left this morning with my husband and daughter to visit the East Coast. It sounds so metropolitan, doesn't it? But it isn't New York or even Boston. They're staying near the University of Maryland and they'll be visiting Washington, D.C. and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware on the days when Grace isn't swimming at the National meet, before they drive home again. My sons were resistant to the houseguest before she came. "The house is too small," they insisted. And, although they were right, we're making do. She has a twin bed in Grace's room that replaced the sturdy Crafstman style desk there. The boys asked again tonight why we invited her. My reasons are many. It's always good to meet people from different cultures. It seemed perfect to have a French girl the same age as Grace. But, and this bugged me, no one else offered to host her. We're in a city surrounded by fairly wealthy people with houses so big that there are rooms they never use, but no one else offered to have her stay with them. I've started working on a theory that the larger someone's house is the less generous they become. Maybe if the space is small, it feels like everyone can give a little without being imposed on too much. Marie laughs a lot. Much more than most French people, I think. She's helpful, always asking if we need an extra hand preparing dinner. She pulls glasses from the cabinet and sets them on the table as we're nearing meal time. Okay, I tell the kids, this is helpful, even if everyone else then goes to the cabinet and pulls out their own glass and fills it before coming to the table. Then after dinner, we replace the empty, unused glasses that Marie set out. I can picture the ceramic water pitcher and the bottles of wine that probably grace her dinner table each evening. My kids are used to pouring their own milk or turning on the tap to get water. The visit has been full of interesting incidents so far. She tasted her first Pop Rocks on the night she arrived. A group of girls at a graduation party urged her to throw a handful in her mouth. She did and this was her reaction. The next day Grace took her along to a car wash that the swim team hosted to raise money for their National team. As you might expect from teenagers, there was more spraying of each other than actual washing of cars. But she got to know the swim team and she'll be spending a lot of time with them this week. They spent another day of swim championships holed up in a tent while the rain poured outside. The swimmers would dash from the tent when their events were called then huddle inside towels, sweatshirts and sleeping bags between races. They left the tent a mishmash of smashed oreos and discarded Vitamin Water bottles. Last night, when Spencer announced he wasn't going on the trip out east, and my husband began to lose patience with Grace's worries about swimming in the big meet, Marie climbed from bed and asked if Grace wanted something for stress. Something homeopathic? She poured the white pellets into a mound in her hand and gave them to Grace. A bit apprehensive, of course, Grace took them anyway. She's sweet, this French girl, and she does have to live with us, so she may not have gotten a bargain. My hope is that they can be friends and that they'll stay in touch long after Marie leaves. That these two girls, who share a love of musicals and small animals, Jane Austen books and warm throw blankets, will visit each other across the ocean regularly, in spite of their differences.
Is it just me or does everyone keep running into things French? Okay, let me be upfront that I am obsessed with France. I've visited probably 8-10 times and it has been the site of my best vacations ever. Lately, everywhere I turn I'm faced with French people, French discussions, French joie de vivre. Every morning, when I'm home, my husband turns on the Tour de France. Mostly, it's a view of bicylists butts, but sometimes I get to see the countryside. Last night on the way home from the swim meet, we turned on The Prairie Home Companion and it was the French show. Every skit they used had a connection to France. Today as I'm updating my syllabus for summer session, I turned on Rick Steve's and his show was about Paris. The entire time people talked about things they'd seen and done in Paris. Mais, oui. It makes me feel a longing like homesickness because I want to go back so badly. It makes me think of being there with the kids the last time when we were on the Bateaux Mouches and the lights of the Eiffel Tower sparkled behind them. And I remember our favorite meal there, on a side street near the Arc de Triomphe. We sat outside and we had a Parisian waiter who joked with the kids and didn't try to correct our crass American ways. On another trip to Paris with my friend Michelle, I was oblivious to French men flirting with me. I asked a waiter at a tea shop how long they were open and he said, "For you, we are always open." I turned back to Michelle and said, "Oh, good, they're open 24 hours." She called me an idiot but my brain was too filled with babies back then to notice flirtation. Earl and I have fleeting vacations through Paris, heading to Provence for long bicycle rides, but we've managed on recent trips to visit The Cluny to see the unicorn tapestry. Next time, I want to take him to l'Orangerie to see Monet's waterlily paintings in the round. Earl says we are running into lots of French things because of the Bastille Day celebration on July 14th. Is it just a conincidence that Marie, a 17-year-old French student will arrive here on July 18th to spend six weeks? Maybe I'm attracting French things to myself. Keep it coming baby. Soon the attraction will be so great I'll be sucked across the ocean and land in the middle of the Champs Elysee
