Dreaming of France -- The Hundred Foot Journey (The Movie)

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
We went with some friends to see The Hundred Foot Journey on Saturday evening. This is opening weekend here in the U.S., so that was pretty early for me to venture out to the theater.
I'm going to admit that I never got through the book, but I was seduced by the trailers and by the fact that the movie showed beautiful French countryside and was filmed in the village where Sally, my blogging friend, lives.

My overall reaction -- I loved it. I'd go again  just to sit there and soak in the sights, imagine the smells, the sound of French rushing past my ears. The movie had no subtitles, but much of it was in English. English was a common language between the Indian family and the villagers.
Often, the words were spoken in French then someone repeated them in English or part of what they said was translated so it became obvious as to the meaning.
The movie rushes through the beginning part that is set in India, showing the love of the family for each other as they create food in their own restaurant, before the political difficulties that led to them being driven from their restaurant and their mother dying. Sad, they plan to search Europe for a place to start a new restaurant. Their brakes fail in Southwestern France, and that's where they set up, just across the street from a Michelin-star restaurant run by Helen Mirren's character. A rivalry ensues.
Some of my favorite scenes showed the rivalry increasing as the Indian cooks prepared for their restaurant opening, cutting vegetables and meat to Indian music, which quickly segued into the classic French chefs chopping vegetables to classical music.

Hassan, the Indian chef, is handsome and charming, entranced by French cuisine and a young French chef, Marguerite. I thought Marguerite, played by Charlotte Le Bon,  was winsome and sincere, trying to help the Indian family, yet jealous of Hassan's success.
The scenes set in St. Antonin felt truly French, even though I know they included false store fronts. The long shots of the village nestled in a valley were breathtaking. I'm not sure if the faraway shots were of Sally's village or not, but I'm sure she'll let us know when she sees the movie. In France, the movie doesn't come out until September.
My husband had read the book, and he told me there was a lot more sex. The movie barely whispered of sex, A scene of Marguerite and Hassan with rumpled clothing, although romance bloomed throughout.
Any criticisms of the movie? As much as I love Helen Mirren in this role, maybe they should have chosen a French actress. Even Charlotte Le Bon is Canadian rather than French. I wonder if her French accent sounds Canadian to the French. And I wonder how Mirren's French and her accent sound to the French too.
This movie is probably too American for the French, but what can we say: We Americans love a happy ending, a lesson learned, a conflict resolved.

Thanks for playing along today with Dreaming of France. Please visit each other's blog so that you can have even more experiences in the country we love. 

First Paragraph, Teaser Tuesday -- The Hundred-Foot Journey

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.

This is the original cover
for the book.

I've seen so much about this book and its incarnation as a movie, that I have to read it. I've had a copy of the book in the house before and my husband read it. He liked it. For some reason, I'm having trouble getting through it. It begins in Mumbai then moves to London, Lumiere (a small town in the French Alps) then Paris. Sally and Sim have both blogged a lot about the movie. The movie was filmed in Sally's French village and Sim has the trailers up.
Maybe I need to skip ahead to the France parts. My blog friends
Here's the intro of the book:

I, Hassan Haji, was born, the second of six children, above my grandfather's restaurant on the Napean Sea Road in what was then called West Bombay, two decades before the great city was renamed Mumbai. I suspect my destiny was written from the very start, for my first sensation of life was the smell of machli ka salan, a spicy fish curry, rising through the floorboards to the cot in my parents' room above the restaurant. To this day I can recall the sensation of those cot bars pressed up coldly against my toddler's face, my nose poked out as far as possible and searching the air for that aromatic packet of cardamom, fish heads, and palm oil, which, even at that young age, somehow suggested there were unfathomable riches to be discovered and savored in the free world beyond.

 I'm joining Teaser Tuesday this week too.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Open to a random page of your current read  and share a teaser sentence from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teaser.

Here's the cover for the
book now that it's about
to be a movie. 

And here's my teaser from page 93:

"Talent," she said through the muffled clutch of her napkin. "Talent that cannot be learned. That skinny Indian teenager has that mysterious something that comes along in a chef once a generation. Don't you understand? He is one of those rare chefs who is simply born. He is an artist. A great artist." 

Has anyone else read this book? I hope the book is as good as the trailers for the movie look.
I'm also joining in with Paris in July since this book is mostly set in France.

Dreaming of France -- Le Weekend

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.

I'd wanted to see the movie Le Weekend for a while and finally got a chance on Saturday evening. Le Weekend is about a British couple, Nick and Meg, who return to Paris for their 30th wedding anniversary. Sounds perfectly fabulous, doesn't it? It could have been a celebratory movie with the couple exploring Paris and their love. But truly, that wouldn't give enough plot points, would it?

The movie starts out with them arriving at the hotel they stayed in 30 years before, and Meg hates the decor and the small size. She flags down a cab and has it take them to a fancy hotel with a balcony view of the Eiffel Tower. Well, movies are fantasies, so we can all go along with that. She smacks a credit card on the counter and we begin to understand that finances might be tight for the couple. He later admits to her that he has been given early retirement from the university where he teaches. She says she wants to quit teaching to paint or travel.
What they learn as they sightsee in Paris is that things aren't the same there -- not for the city or for the couple. In 30 years, they've come to love each other deeper and to detest each other in ways too.
The movie was beautiful and disturbing. I think the disturbing parts, for me, were when I saw glimpses of myself or my own relationship in it. Would my husband and I treat each other with such disregard and disrespect? Would we become just wallpaper?
But, of course, it's Paris and the very streets exude romance. So they go back and forth between loving and hating each other.
They run into an old friend, played by Jeff Goldblum, on the streets and go to a dinner party at his house. They don't know what to think of his new marriage and new baby on the way -- starting over in his 60s. But the friend's admiration of Nick reminds him that he once had aspirations too, that his life has meant something.
One very touching part of the movie was when Meg related a story about being out with a friend when her phone rang. She answered and hung up after a few minutes. Her friend asked who that was because Meg was laughing and happy. The friend asked was that Meg's secret lover. And she laughed and said, "That was my husband." I've known people who spoke so harshly to their spouses on the phone, as if they were children who they needed to instruct, so that part stayed with me.
Should you watch this movie? I told my 22-year-old daughter that she probably wouldn't enjoy it, but for anyone getting a bit older who has experienced the joys and disappointments of a long-term relationship, yes, watch it. Le Weekend was interesting and sad in parts, but in the end, redemptive, I think. After the movie ended, my husband and I went to Cafe Kerouac to listen to some music. We definitely did not want another Saturday night in, a chance to vegetate and grow set in our ways.

French Breakfast and Movie Review

I don't want to only post book and movie reviews during Paris in July, but I'm not in France so that does limit my experiences.
This morning, I brought France to myself by baking pain au chocolat and plain croissants for breakfast. I shared a pain au chocolat with my husband then spread homemade strawberry jam on my plain croissant, all while drinking a cafe au lait and watching the Tour de France as the bicyclists speed toward Nancy.
We have a connection to Nancy because a French boy from that town came to stay with us one summer. He brought us a delightful little book with pictures of the Villages de France.
This one is from the Lorraine region, where Nancy is also located.

But, back to food. At Trader Joe's in the freezer section, you can buy a 4-pack of chocolate croissants or an 8-pack of mini croissants each for $4.99. Set out the little frozen nuggets the night before. The next morning, they have thawed and risen. Beat an egg and spread across the top of the croissants before baking. They're very yummy and a good 2nd choice if you can't make it to France or French croissants.

Earlier this week, I watched a movie set in France. Even if I don't enjoy a movie set in France, I usually enjoy the scenery. This one -- not so much.

The Family, directed by Luc Besson and starring Robert DeNiro and Michelle Pfeiffer, would be the perfect movie to watch if someone wanted to move to France, and you wanted to convince them not to. There is not one redeemable thing about France in the movie.
The premise is that an American mob family is relocated to Normandy in the witness protection program. The mob in the U.S. is still searching for them to kill the whole family. As a matter of fact, the movie begins with an assassin walking into an apartment and killing a family of four. Then he cuts off the finger of the father and sends it to the mob boss in prison. The mob boss compares it to the fingerprints of the dead guy to DeNiro's character. Nope. They killed the wrong family and continue the search. And that sets the tone for the hilarity and violence that continues throughout the movie.
I'm not big on violence, but what bothered me more than the violence was the way the French people were portrayed. The grocery store clerk and two older French women made fun of Pfeiffer's character as she searched for peanut butter in the grocery store. So she blew it up.
The worst French characters were the high school students. None of them were attractive and that offended me. They also seemed to be typically American -- bullies, jocks, nerds and sluts.
The French were shone in a bit of a better light when the family threw a barbecue, but according to the son, they were only coming to make fun of the Americans. So they served hamburgers and Cokes.
The movie ended pretty violently with the family coming out to relocate again.
Apparently this movie is based on the French movie Badfellas, which must be a play on Goodfellas. It's supposed to be funny, but don't choose it if  you're dreaming of France.

Dreaming of France -- Last Love Movie Review

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.
I first heard about this movie when they were calling it Mr. Morgan's Last Love. I learned about it on Sim's blog Chapter 1 - Take 1. Apparently, somewhere along the line, they changed the title to Last Love. It stars Michael Caine and Clemence Poesy (Fleur de la Coeur from the Harry Potter movies).
Matthew Morgan (Michael Caine) is an American widower living in Paris who can't get over the death of his wife (Jane Alexander) three years before. He rarely goes out of his apartment. He's given up.
One day on the bus, he meets Pauline (Poesy) and they strike up an unlikely friendship. Pauline reminds Morgan of his wife when she was young. Morgan reminds Pauline of her father who died. The expectations are a little off.
After Morgan tries to kill himself, his adult children show up in Paris and assume that Pauline is after his money.
I love the scenery and the feel of France throughout the movie.
This movie is in English, but from the ending feels more French than American. Some of you know my feeling that French comedies are often more tragic than funny.
I'll say that the ending is sad but hopeful.
Here's the trailer.