Nonsense and Insensibility: Women in French Film

I'm taking another cinema class this semester, covering the 1930s - 60s.  It's with my favorite professor, who always has a cheerful, bustling sort of energy, as though she just got off the phone joking with her best friend.  This despite the fact that the films we're discussing are -- just...perplexingly depressing.

We started with "Hotel du Nord," which, granted, is a realist depiction of life during the Depression.  The film opens with a young couple in a working class neighborhood, renting a room for the night to follow through with their suicide pact.  Luckily, the guy's a terrible shot and just grazes his fiancé, and then chickens out of killing himself.  While he spends a year(?!) in prison, she's hired at the hotel, befriends the colorful characters there, and is pursued by a grouchy pimp/murderer.  My favorite character is the pimp's girlfriend, a salty broad who talks back to police and remains immune to the rampant escapism that intoxicates the other main characters.  However, she remains attached to her abusive, cold boyfriend, even after he runs away with the delusional fiancé-now-maid.

Next is "Le Corbeau" (The Raven), now considered the first film noir, as it is saturated with mal-intent.  In a small village, anonymous letters are sent, first to a doctor and his mistress, then to an increasingly wide circle of influential community members, threatening exposure of their sins and secrets.  The town is gripped by increasingly feverish speculation, suspicion, and denunciation.  The film came out in 1943 and was suppressed for several years, as no one was in the mood to reflect on the fact that all of us do and are capable of doing dishonorable things.  Though this film devoted plenty of time to exploring various men's foibles and disgraceful acts, we are ultimately presented two -- perhaps three -- guilty, cruel women as the tormentors/shit-stirrers of the rumor-mongered doctor and village.

Shifting to an ostensibly more fun tone, though still rather upsetting, we jump ahead to the mid-50s with Brigitte Bardot's first big hit, "Et Dieu...créa la femme" (And God Created Woman).  If you're looking for an embodiment of the most stereotypically sexist, infantile, and objectified idea of womanhood, your search is over.  The "savage" and explosively unruly Juliette is a walking pair of boobs who oscillates between the attentions of a wealthy industrialist three times her age, and two unfortunately entranced brothers, the dorkier of whom she marries, the other whom she baldly continues to pursue.  Is this a reflection of unbridled post-war capitalism?  French society contaminated by the vulgarity of big expensive American cars and hedonism?  Can we substitute a sexy lady erratically dancing for any character development whatsoever?

-We're not quite done with women who have crazy romantic entanglements with awful men!  "A bout de souffle" (A Breath of Fresh Air) brings us to Godard, Truffaut, and the nouvelle vague.  The film centers on a couple who interact with all the flair and sophistication of newly acquainted twelve year olds.  Michel is a run-of-the-mill, low-grade-mobster bad boy, demanding and disparaging (while craving to impress) Patricia, a pragmatically faux-naive, second-wave-ish American.  They while away several days talking about nothing, having sex, arguing about whether she'll join him on the run, until she's so bored of him she rats him out to the police.  The End.

"I dance when I'm angry" - Bret McKenzie

La Flotte harbor low tide

some vegetables got going very late in the season, so I made a curry with the cutest little guys

Goodwood Revival

After a quick and dirty three days back in the trenches of formal grammar study, I absconded to a sort of mid-century English fantasy mini-vacation.  Goodwood is the estate of the Duke of Richmond, located just outside Chichester.  There are rolling green hills, sheep pastures, tidal marshes skirting a harbor with quaint old wooden boats, a nearly-thousand-year-old cathedral, and pubs galore.  But we came for the racing.

Perhaps more accurately, we came to share in my dad and brother's love of race cars, and for the spectacle of thousands of people dressed with exuberant creativity and exacting accuracy -- nailing the fashions, hairdos, makeup, and caricatures of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.  This year's theme was the Summer of Love/1967, and while there were hippies, a Hendrix look-alike cover band, and a hundred vintage VW buses on hand, they were far outnumbered by more classic race fans in their post-war hemlines, Stetsons, and flight suits, swing dancing away their ration book coupon cares.  This dash and glamour really did set off the cars, all of which seemed perfectly restored, motors impeccably tuned to roar around and around the track.

Happily, the rain wasn't too bad, and resulted in vivid rainbows.  We spent the evenings in posh quarters: a "cottage" (townhouse) on the grounds of Chichester Cathedral, steps away from lovely gardens and remnants of medieval walls.  A generous amount of wine was drunk with tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, spaghetti and salad, and hefty chunks of chocolate.  I got to run my mouth speaking heaps English in its native heath, savoring the nuance and complexity that evades me in French.

We came back after four days, but soon my parents followed, and we had another sort of foreign fantasyland to explore.  We showed them around the island, visiting the beach bar, picnicking on the shore, cycling through the cobblestoned village to grab fresh croissants and crab and oysters.  The sun was mostly out, I skipped some classes, and we recounted old family stories with generous portions of cheese.

And that's how September went, with the days little by little shortening, but very full.

more than a racetrack, a real festival of all things car

Jean-François naps among our 50s housewife neighbors

There was a display of traditional shepherd and dog herding, quite a contrast in speed compared with the cars.

The wet track made slide-y conditions.

In the pits!

Pumpkin update: they seemed to have reached maximum size and orangeness, so we picked them. Upon cooking the big guy, we discovered he's impressively bland, so I scooped out the roast segments and transformed them into pumpkin spice cake. 

La rentrée

Back to school is somewhat ominously referred to here as "The Re-Entry."  It conjures images of children donning scuba gear, unsmilingly taking a last deep breath, and submerging themselves in unknown scholastic waters.  I, too, will soon be back in the classroom, trying not to drown in French but rather to refine my strokes.

Accordingly, we've been spending more time at the beach.  The water is warm, the tides are big, and friends with teenagers finally motivated us to get the paddle board in the water.  Not only that, we pulled out all the stops and ate both tripe and cod liver, at the request of said teenagers.  

Breaking news: I read "The Little Prince" for the first time.  How I reached such an advanced age without doing so I can't explain, but I'm making up for it by also reading it in French.  On deck are French editions of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Philosophy" and "White Fang."

a blustery choppy day

Marta and her daughter came to visit, and we discovered the bin of period dress-up clothes at the museum

sun-dried acanthus(?)

Abuelo y sus nietos*

*Jean-François is thoroughly French but most of his ancestors were Spanish (re: last name Lopez).  His grandsons call him "abuelo."

While my maternal skills will likely forever go untested (I just turned 42!), I have been yanked forged ahead into grandma territory.  Spoiler alert: this role is the same character as Aunt Claire, but poorly dubbed in French.  Two of Jean-François's grandsons, ages 3.5 and 4.5, spent a week with us.  We swam, we built sand "chateaus," we harvested the remaining onions from the garden, and we went for thinly-veiled long walks to drain them of excessive energy -- often foolishly followed by eating ice cream.

They're good kids, but are the age when every thought is verbalized.  They love nothing more than chattering with each other and dissolving into laughter repeating nonsense syllables.  Thus, I seethe with exasperation and annoyance, pathetically trying to score points with sarcastic answers to the torrent of banal questions like, "What did you buy at the grocery store?" Me: "Food."  Like a fairytale villain, within my outwardly youthful/middle-aged body dwells the soul of a withered old crone, plotting to cast a spell of everlasting silence.

We had a reasonably good understanding both literally and figuratively.  Unlike last year, Jeremie didn't correct my mispronunciation when reading stories aloud.  And they understood my tone, if not the exact phrasing, when I admonished, "You no it can do, you will be made worse if you done!" And, "You must stop, yous, to talk, only you sleep!"  It was nice to be able to swear occasionally in English and go completely unnoticed.

Jean-François and I morphed, at times, in response to our duties in loco parentis.  I got to see his dad-type-behavior, his interest in teaching and sharing experiences and fun, his affection and discipline and and tenderness for seemingly indestructible balls of energy that are obviously fragile, vulnerable little creatures.  We had each other's backs and tag-teamed the less fun parts (see: butt wiping) to give each other breaks.  We found respite sharing a stiff drink, eating chocolate while the kids napped, talking about politics, and remaining sexual beings as a sort of bulwark against the degradation of personhood effected by small-child demands.

I know, it was only one week.  Anyone with children will want to (slap me?) roll their eyes at my prissily dipping my toe into .00001% of their life.  But I'm not a parent, I'm just a (sort of) grandma.

We did a little yoga every afternoon, the highlight of which (for the guys) was being shirtless.

I have inherited my mom's facial expressions, and perhaps also sentiments; grim relief?

building a "cabin"

Lighted

It's the heart of summer but there's a change in the wind; it's been blowing rather forcefully, out of the west for weeks.  The rustling leaves quake and murmur and stage-whisper outside the window.  As the sun creeps along the planks of the deck, I've become familiar with the various angles of light at different hours.

The bathroom has the only east-facing window, and on sunny mornings is almost theatrically lit, like heaven is blessing the souls of our towels.  The only west-facing window is in our bedroom, and looks over the deck into the trees.  In winter you can read by the orangey glow that reaches through the bare branches.  There's a window over the kitchen sink and a big glass sliding door in the living room that face south.  The somewhat unfortunate drab grays of the kitchen are thus partially brightened, and a couch is situated to maximize cat-type lounging.  

My office has an interior window that communicates with the kitchen, sharing the passing sunlight.  Beneath this window I slouch at my desk, chair low, elbows high, because my face tries to get as close as possible to the papers, a sort of attempt at reducing the distance between the extraction and extrusion of words from paper through brain and onto other paper.  My office also has a north-facing window, a sort of cardinal point, and passage to places remote.  My desk sits comfortably between the two.

our local version of Manhattanhenge, where the sun sets perfectly aligned with the bike path

cloudy light at the salt marshes 

growing wild in the yard

high tide evening light

La Houle*

*the swell

As part of continuing learning French, I'm reading an instructional book about surfing.  It's aimed at adolescents, so not overly academic or literary, and I actually enjoy the experience as I can understand without having to look up words.  Jean-François and I also try to speak French together most of the time, and so my "news" of the day quickly reinforces a rather nautically-themed vocabulary.

I'm also learning, somewhat more reluctantly, auto insurance and tax domicile-related terminology, as we just bought a new (used) car.  I shouldn't be surprised at this point, but it turns out there's nearly as much paperwork for me here as for my visa.  Maybe France produced so many prominent Existentialists because its floridly absurd bureaucracy scars the populace with its incomprehensibility...

In other news, our garden is doing its best despite the soil being 100% sand.  We pulled out the fifty of so shallots, which are delicious but quite small, like garlic cloves.  Five beets, the size of clementines, were also tasty.  What were labeled as zucchini appear to be cucumber, but that's fine either way.  The pumpkin blossoms look great but don't seem interested in becoming pumpkins.  This fall we'll add a ton of compost and manure, and really be ready to grow. 

perhaps the frenchiest of alliums

Jumpy and Junior Citroen

I'm just happy you're here

Iberiana

I wouldn't say we're van-life-ing wrong, it just feels neither here nor there -- I'm either longing for the simplicity and independence of my tent (where it's normal to be unwashed and exhausted), or else I'm fantasizing about the air conditioning and running water that would otherwise be integral to sleeping "indoors."  A big factor is certainly the heat, as mid-May was already high 80s, and the combination of sun-baked upholstery and daily dune climbs withered me like an off-brand chunk of dried mango.  Before our little fridge frizzled out, I could clutch a chilled liter of water to my chest to (try to) sleep.

But the van is great for casting a wide net, getting to out-of-the-way places, and peeing mid-morning in a country that abhors public bathrooms.  The chameleon-like ability of the van is to come and go on a whim, to park in a city center and be your very own lackluster hostel for the night.

We're just finishing a tour of southwestern Portugal and Andalusia, Spain.  In Portugal, we left the van next to a wakeboarding school/brah-paradise, and hiked ten days on the Rota Vicentina, a.k.a. Fisherman's Trail.  This series of paths connects villages and beaches on the cliffstrewn coast.  Big dunes covered with flowering plants, tiny carved out coves, long sand beaches, cafes just opening for the season, and occasional surfers dotting the waves unspooled before us.  Brave storks and storklets(?) perched in nests in obscenely precarious places, undeterred by strong winds or asshole seagulls dive bombing the fledglings.

After flirting with heatstroke and recuperating at a yoga-yurt sort of campground, we took the forecast for 100F as a sign to stop.  Back in the van, we crossed the border into the Gary, Indiana, of Spain: an enormous industrial zone complete with cancerous-smelling air, just next to where Columbus departed on his voyage to America(!).

There are many, many beautiful places in Spain: Sevilla is lovely, with big parks and well-preserved historical quarters; little Moorish villages perch in the mountains of the Alpujarra; Granada is stuffed with great art and music and food and life.  But we also came to Andalusia to visit where Jean-François's great-grandparents came from before emigrating to Algeria and leaving for France.  What I call our "cultural heritage" stops all shared elements of economic hardship and ecological exploitation.  In Berja, we found the remnants of a prosperous mining town, now with a humdrum, scruffy mien.  Little Albuñol is nearly choked out by the expanse of intensive-agriculture greenhouses squatting throughout the valley.  In fact, this region has been expanded by silting up the river, creating a huge, unnatural plain extending from the feet of the mountains.  The 40,000 hectares of greenhouses of El Edijo, the "sea of plastic," is the most visible man-made structure from space.  Depressingly, they even extend into the national park; the Internet tells me they are part of the dystopian introductory shots of the newer "Blade Runner."

To end on a cheerier note, tapas is originally from Andalusia.  We have had gallons of gazpacho and platefuls of thinly-sliced salty ham.  This is also the home of sangria, and -- hey, it's 5 o'clock.

The one time I was not hot, in the wind as the sun set.

The Rota Vicentina from north to south gets progressively cliffier as you go.

stork neighbors

Where the river meets the sea, and consequently is a salty place to try to wash your shirt.

best camping kitchen 

close-up of Alcazar of Sevilla; not pictured, Jean-François having his beard trimmed by a -- Barber of Seville...

The Caminito Del Rey, within a big gorge

most decoratively plated carrot cake

traditional Moorish mountain village houses

Pampaniera