Le retour de Mickey Rourke

I finally saw The Wrestler this past weekend. In a word, it is AMAZING. Though I've never been familiar with lead actor Mickey Rourke's career and have never gotten closer to professional wrestling than watching Slim Jim commercials in the early 90s, I am fascinated by this film.

There's absolutely nothing French about The Wrestler - it's a truly American film in every sense: plot (washed-up wrestler woos washed-up stripper); setting (New Jersey, blue-collar capital of cinema and rock & roll alike); soundtrack (mind-blowing 80s hair metal and a Springsteen special). I mention it here* because it's become well-known, especially since the film's release in December 2008, that the French were the ones who never gave up on Mickey Rourke. They've believed in him since his debut in Diner and, like his Wrestler character Randy "The Ram" Robinson's fans, their critics and audiences stuck with him though his own bout with the 90s doldrums, long after American critics gave up on him entirely. "The 90s fuckin' sucked!" Randy and stripper friend Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) emphatically agree in the film. Both actors would probably agree with that statement even off-screen, considering the hard knocks their careers each endured during those years.

Rourke at one time blatantly said that the French stuck behind him all those years because they were more cultured. I can't defend that exact statement, but it does sound like something I'd say myself, so I can't blame him for it, either.

Personally, several things stood out to me in the film:

I was immediately struck by the parallel career trajectories of both Randy and the metal bands that provide the film's soundtrack. Quiet Riot, Ratt, Cinderella and the rest are poster children for glory days that have been usurped by drug overdoses, health problems and infighting.

During one poignant scene, Randy attends a "legend signing" event that draws far from a crowd. After schlepping his Polaroid camera (for photo ops, $8 each), faded VHS tapes and sweatshirts to the event, he stares around the room and sees that the heart attack he's endured is nothing compared to the wheelchairs, colostomy bags and canes of his peers.

I was also impressed at how Rourke and director Darren Aronofsky were able to make the audience care for Randy. He seems like such a nice guy that it is painful to watch him screw up every good thing he tries to establish in his life, and also to realize how much he's screwed up before the film even begins. As Bruce Springsteen sings at the end of the film, Randy truly is a "one-trick pony" who decides that it's too late in life to turn his back on the only ones who care about him - his fans.

The film has had its French premiere but doesn't arrive in theatres there until February 18. When it does, I'll be perusing the reviews to see what Rourke's biggest fans have to say about his most acclaimed performance ever. I'm sure we'll be hoping for a Best Actor Oscar win on both sides of the pond.

*You have no idea how happy it made me to realize that I could include a reflection on The Wrestler on my blog. From the beginning, I've tried to keep this site strictly franco-centric.

Encore une fois

"How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you - you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences - like rags and shreds of your very life." ~Katherine Mansfield



I'm back after a very long hiatus.

I made this blog private two years ago because I had reason to believe it was being used to "spy" on me,* but I've revived it mainly due to the hole in my heart.

No, I haven't developed a medical condition over the past two years; it's simply been far too long since I've been in la belle France. A two-week honeymoon in French Polynesia certainly did help, but that was nearly three years ago. Our economy is so bad that I'm beginning to worry that I'll never make it back to my beloved castles, cheeses, pastries and wines.

It is my hope that writing about France regularly again will help with my heartache.


*I think I have my own private Javert!

Photo: Château d'Azay-le-Rideau, Indre-et-Loire, France. Copyright MLG.

francais or françaises - there is no françai.

I came across some phrasing used in one of today's AP Wire stories that really bothered me:

"Fifty-six percent of French complain that a poor night's sleep has affected their job performance, according to the ministry." (full article)

The offending phrase was "Fifty-six percent of French". Does that sound awkward to anyone else but me? I understand the reasoning behind shortening "Frenchmen" to "French" - we wouldn't want to offend any Frenchwomen out there - but, come on. This makes it look like the journalist reporting this article has issues with his or her parts of speech. I think that decisions like this, on whether or not to politically correct an adjective of nationality in use for hundreds of years, should be based on what the official language of that nationality dictates. The decision would be clear in French: francais or françaises - there is no françai. How ridiculous! "French" in this context looks as silly to me as françai does. The French themselves clearly say either "Frenchmen" or "Frenchwomen", so why are we changing our wording? You can't just say "French", you have to put an article in front of it to make it general. That's the only way that the adjective can be truncated inoffensively! As I have been told countless times by one of my favorite French professors, "La langue française est très precise." - phrasing is specific for a reason (or deliberately ambiguous for a reason). Problems such as this are accepted as an inherited problem of language and would ruin the turn of phrase to switch out the accepted form of a word.

The same problem probably exists for other adjectives that follow this pattern in English, such as "Dutchmen"...sometimes I wish we had our own guardians of language, just like the French do, so issues like these could be dealt with directly instead of the AP and NY Times starting trends and waiting for the major dictionaries to keep up and legitimize their stupid variations with actual entries.

From Miserable Beginnings to the Top of the World

If what wikipedia reports is true, Ségolène Royal certainly had one of those childhoods straight out of Roald Dahl or Charles Dickens. Apparently, her father never wanted daughters and looked at them as slaves and baby machines. "I have five children and three girls." Ouch. She had to fight with him just to get the privilege of completing high school. I've come across men who had this type of attitude before - my husband's grandfather didn't see the point in schooling a woman past high school and fought tooth-and-nail with his eldest daughter before she finally was allowed to earn her teaching certification. But high school? Compulsory high school education was instituted by Napoleon--you'd think any conservative Gaul worth his salt would advocate it.

Rising above those sorts of horrible influences and experiences certainly qualifies Ségolène to be seen as a role model, particularly among the young Magrebine women that now live in virtually every city in France. As a pied noir herself, Ségolène has a unique angle on the current presidential race - she has witnessed colonialism firsthand and could quite possibly become a voice for the marginalized citizens of her country. She has already served as a voice for other marginalized groups, including women and the handicapped.

It would be such a great victory for women everywhere if Ségolène were elected to govern one of the world's major powers.

Photo: Ségolène Royal being greeted by a Tahitian during the France-Oceania Summit in June 2006. (courtesy Tahitipresse)

The Rewards of Bureaucratic Inefficiency

I just finished reading in The Times (of London) about the continuing practice of granting "jackpot bonuses" to French civil servants who decide to retire to French Polynesia or an island in the Indian Ocean. The practice is trying to be stopped, but with elections coming up so soon, Chirac doesn't want to upset the old-timers that do so much of the voting...

I've always said that France had the best employment deals out of any country, period. No one minds about paying higher prices from everything from candy bars to gasoline if it means a living wage for all. Of course, this is above and beyond a "living wage", but it makes me want to move to France and become a civil servant, just so I can essentially get a paid permanent vacation to Taha'a someday!

Sure beats being a civil servant in the US...sure, some of the jobs might be a little more glamorous than others, but how'd you like to be stuck working in a mailroom in the basement of the Pentagon for 40 years, only to retire and not be able to afford the medication you need for the stress injuries you've acquired over years of repetitive motions? Seriously, I would be Chirac's personal ashtray valet any day...

Vote Early and Vote Before the First Course

Today, of course, is Election Day. In the time-honored tradition of the US of A, it is held on a business day - we wouldn't want civic duty interfering with the weekend free time the majority of 9-to-5ers enjoy. You've gotta pay us to exercise our rights! Not so for my beloved froggies across the pond:

The French wouldn't want to take any money out of the pockets of the businessmen whom, more often than not, they've had to subsidize. Not to mention the government workers--wouldn't want to swipe away any bureaucratic efficiency (the oxymoron to end all oxymorons) and waste thousands of euros worth of French tax money allowing employees to be late to work, leave early or have a break to go vote. No; it makes far more sense to interrupt a Frenchman's leisurely 5-hour Sunday lunch with civic duty. Yes, French election day takes place on a weekend - civic duties are on your own time, mon pôte!

It's a wonder anyone ever gets elected at all in France...maybe they rush out to the polls sometime between the main course and the cheese plate.

La Fête

Gee, during all that time I wasn't blogging, I missed my anniversary. Joyeux Anniversaire, Bouchers de la langue sacrée! Happy belated birthday to me.

I suppose it's all subjective...

The following just popped up at the top of my Gmail inbox:

Funny Quote of the Day - Jean Anouilh - "What you get free costs too much."

Now, from what I know of Anouilh's work, this quote really isn't funny. While his work is full of humor and amusing social commentary, I see this particular quote as more seriously philosophical than "funny".

If you visit the "Funny Quote of the Day" link, you'll be taken to a listing of Anouilh's other quotes - none of which seem to provoke any guffaws. This is more the sort of quote one could write a 10-page paper on, rather than get a cheap chuckle over. I wonder who is making the decision as to which quotes to feature on the Gmail crawl - maybe he/she was going more for funny=strange rather than funny=haha. Whatever the motivation, it is definitely bizarre.

La politesse de la voile

I came across an excellent, enlightening point on l'affaire de la voile this morning in Slate. Here is an excerpt:

"Just as it is considered rude to enter a Balinese temple wearing shorts, so, too, is it considered rude, in a Western country, to hide one's face. We wear masks when we want to frighten, when we are in mourning, or when we want to conceal our identities. To a Western child—or even an adult—a woman clad from head to toe in black looks like a ghost. Thieves and actors hide their faces in the West; honest people look you straight in the eye.

Given that polite behavior is required of schoolteachers or civil servants in other facets of their jobs, it doesn't seem to me in the least offensive to ask them to show their faces when dealing with children or the public. If Western tourists can wear sarongs in Balinese temples to show respect for the locals, so, too, can religious Islamic women show respect for the children they teach and for the customers they serve by leaving their head scarves on but removing their full-face veils. " (full article)

Thank you, Anne Applebaum, for pulling this out of the context of racism or anti-Muslim sentiment. It makes perfect sense when explained in this light. It is striking how much the "customs" of Western culture are overlooked in these debates. We frequently make adjustments to what is acceptable or lawful in our culture, under the guise of the First Amendment or otherwise, without giving any thought to the fact that other cultures do not make the same adjustments - or, at least Westerners do not expect the adjustments to be made for them. I am by no means advocating the inflexibility of Western attitudes, but it is just refreshing to have an objective anthropological eye cast upon this particular issue.

The Smoking Ban to End All Smoking Bans

I'm extremely sad to hear that France will soon be banning smoking in public places.

I'm no fan of cigarette smoke, but it's just so quintessentially French that I'm willing to put up with it for that sake. I lived with a Frenchman who chain smoked; when his chain-smoking friends would come over to shoot the breeze, smoke for hours and eat oysters, I'd hide up in my room. He'd also smoke at work even though he wasn't supposed to; he'd just open up his office window and hang the cigarette out of it. It all just seemed so normal that I never thought to complain to him or anyone else about it.

Gone will be the smoke-infused Paris that David Sedaris waxed so poetically about in Me Talk Pretty One Day. Maybe he'll just have to get an apartment in Romania. With this ban, France will no longer be the country of bon vivants; but at least it might create a job similar to that of the professional pooper-scooper guy for picking up the discarded butts that will litter French sidewalks more than ever before

It seems like the next thing they'll ban is public kissing. What will French teenagers do with all the extra free time that will create?

Flyboys

I actually liked this movie. It had just enough non-fight sequences to keep me interested in the plot. Particularly intruiguing was actress Jennifer Decker, who looks like she could be Emma Watson's older sister. She did a perfectly convincing job of being barely bilingual - nothing is more annoying than "foreigners" who suddenly speak fluent English after one scene of minced words. Kind of like Ginger Rogers trying to pretend she couldn't dance or the Von Trapp kids pretending they couldn't harmonize.

This movie (and it was clearly a movie rather than a film) was pretty much panned by the NY Times and other major newspapers, but I think they were missing the point. Perhaps the biggest such point was Jean Reno, who was labelled a walking stereotype - while I thought he displayed the least amount of cliché out of the entire cast of characters. Compared to Rawlings, the down-home country fried turkey and snooty Briggs Lowry, daddy's little dividend that just won't pay off, Reno did a fine job of playing M. le Capitaine Thénault.


Besides, who doesn't love to hate a swarthy German named "The Black Falcon"? Muwahaha!

Invitation to Embarrassment

As seen on a recently-received wedding invitation:

Réspondez, s'il vous plaît

...Only the verb répondre doesn't have an 's' in it as it does in English. That's what tipped me off to the fact that they were probably homemade invitations (and surprisingly well-done ones, at that). However, if it turns out that they were bought and paid for, well, she should demand her money back!

Lune de miel

I am taking a break from blogging for the next few weeks due to my upcoming wedding and honeymoon. I won't be back with you until the second or third week of July (depending on how long it takes me to get settled enough to sit down and write a post).

We are going to Tahiti for our honeymoon, though, and I am sure this will lead to all sorts of fascinating Frenchie encounters for me to write about. At the very least, I should have some nifty photos to share or an airport story or two (don't you just LOVE those?).

Au revoir!


Photo: The tiare, Tahiti's fragrant national flower.

Spelling Bee

Pittsburgh's representative in the National Spelling Bee was eliminated yesterday after misspelling the word chervil. Reading this story this morning led me on yet another excruciating trip down memory lane:

I was in one of the preliminary competitions for that very same spelling bee when I was in 6th grade. After informing me that I'd been chosen to participate, my teacher gave me a special vocabulary book that had lists of words arranged according to subject with which to practice. Some of them were doozies. I practiced for the bee the same way I practiced for spelling tests: I'd skim through the book when I didn't have anything better to do or when my cousins weren't using it to play impromptu games of Balderdash, but other than that I didn't really place much importance on it.

I can't even remember where the event took place; it was in some nameless, totally forgettable auditorium with a little stage set up in it. I was pretty nervous, especially after I spotted where my parents were sitting and my mom gave me one of those perpetually embarrassing "I'm so proud of you, my little girl!" looks.

I made it through several rounds. I wasn't totally embarrassed by the word that I missed until years later, when I decided what I would spend the rest of my life studying:

The word I missed was financier.

I'm so embarrassed by this now, but really, how is an 11-year-old girl who hates math supposed to know what a financier is? Even if I would've asked the proctor to use it in a sentence, I still would've been up shit crick without a paddle (yes, in this neck of the woods, it's "crick"!). I can't even honestly say that being exposed to French earlier in life would have helped me, considering that I had never seen the word in print nor heard it pronounced until that point. So I suppose I'm beating myself up for nothing...but it's still embarrassing. That's like telling someone you're a bestselling author but can't write a decent sentence to save your life. Oops.

[indiscriminate mumbling here]

I had all four of my wisdom teeth surgically extracted on Friday. Ouch.

My poor swollen jowls aren't too happy about speaking English, let alone French. As a matter of fact, I haven't even attempted to pronounce one word of French since Friday morning. I thought about it, but then decided that it would be disastrous to even try. Frenchies must just resort to sign language until the swelling goes down, because tensing the muscles around the lips to form such sounds as [y] and [u] is simply excruciating, not to mention trying to spread one's lips far enough to properly pronounce a sound like [i]. That's one good thing about English: it's an easily mumbled language. I can hold my cheeks in the same position and still manage to mumble a sentence that's somewhat intelligible. Maybe one of these days, I'll see someone come up to me on the metro and set a little card down on my seat. Instead of the card saying something to the effect of "I'm deaf and I sell pins for a living", it'll say "Take pity on me, I just had dental surgery and can't speak for the next two weeks. Your donation goes to feed my diet of chocolate mousse and flan." And I will gladly contribute to the cause.

Mushrooms, Chocolates - Same Diff!

Last week, my employer sent me to a one-day conference with a coworker. It was great to get out of the office for a change and have some self-enrichment time.

During our lunch hour, she and I were joined by two other women, each from different companies. We made some pleasant small talk while picking through the offerings on the [rather pitiful] buffet.

When our check was delivered, my coworker asked the other women if they were being reimbursed by their respective companies for the meal. I commented, "Well, since we're eating on their dime, we should order the truffles!"

To which one of the other women at the table, a good 20 years older than me, replied, "Oh - I hadn't even thought about dessert."

I suppose I just have a totally different frame of reference than most people.

"Don't forget to dot your i's, cross your t's and accent your nasal consonants..."

I just stumbled across a great blog on grammar & linguistics and wanted to share this particular gem of an article, as it illustrates something I try to explain to people quite often:

April 25, 2006
Full tilde
Jim Gordon recently complained about how the New York Times crossword puzzle elides diacritical marks from foreignisms even when this results in a different word in the relevant language. The most egregious example, Jim noted, is the use of "year, in Spanish" as a clue for ANO, even though ano differs crucially from año. Below the jump, a real-world example illustrating the perils of de-tildeing año(s), provided by Matthew Baldwin of The Morning News.

My friend Rebecca is a prosecutor and, whenever I see her, I insist she fill me in on her recent cases. Though most involve routine litigation, she occasionally tells a gem of a tale.

The last time I asked, she told me about the Anus Motion.

"This guy gets pulled over on suspicion of a DUI," she said, "And it turns out that he only speaks Spanish. So the cop radios for a Spanish-speaking colleague. A second officer shows up, reads the driver his rights in Spanish off of a little card that all cops carry, and they administer the breathalyzer test. Sure enough, the guy is soused.

"We figure this case is a slam dunk. But a few weeks later the driver's lawyer submits a motion to have the results of the breathalyzer voided, saying that the defendant didn't understand his rights before we gave him the test. And we're all, like, 'Nuh-uh! We read him his rights. In Spanish, even.'

"But the defense somehow got a copy of the Spanish language card that the officer read from, and noticed that the little squiggle was missing from above an 'n' in the sentence: '¿Tiene veinteuno años?' In English that literally translates to 'Do you have 21 years?' — in other words, this was just a routine question to make sure the guy was an adult. But without the tilde over the 'n', the word 'años' becomes 'anos' — Spanish for 'anus.' [sic: it's Spanish for 'anuses.']

"They're claiming that the driver thought the officer asked 'Do you have 21 anuses', despite the fact that the officer reading the card spoke fluent Spanish and would have pronounced it 'años' anyway. And the defendant said 'si.' We're supposed to believe that the guy genuinely thought he was being asked if he had multiple anuses and answered with an enthusiastic 'yes!' [read more]


This further supports my idea of having shock buzzers on students' desks that are wired to the teacher's wristwatch and every time he/she forgets an accent mark, a healthy buzz is administered. Getting a mild shock now is better than getting fired from the state police office later because of a lousy tilde or cedille, isn't it?

"Waiter, I'll have a dry white--hold the splinters."

The French are panicking. Their casual attitude toward marketing and product practicality has finally caught up with them. To bring production costs and, eventually, consumer retail prices down, the French government has approved a bill allowing vintners to flavor their wines with wood chips. This would replace the traditional usage of barrels to flavor and store wine.

Of course, all this means is that a market will eventually open up for artisanal wines, just as it has with artisanal cheeses and breads. The vineyards that go the cheaper route now will eventually bottom out, while those that remain true to tradition will have a niche market that will sustain them. The French have always valued quality over quantity in most aspects of their lives. (The only exception I can readily think of is that French kids can't get enough of American rap, hip-hop and R&B. Nothing against our home-grown musical genres, but a lot of the crap that we export is just despicable...try to imagine a 10-year-old French kid singing along with 'My Humps' or 'Hollaback Girl' - phonetically. 'Nuff said.)

My opinion is, French wine will always be French wine, and there is nothing that can replace it. I don't like looking at a restaurant menu and seeing "Sonoma" and "Napa" next to every bottle, but Americans have always been known to sacrifice quality for price. Not that California wines are inferior; they're just not French. (Yes, I'm a snob, but I promise I'm a friendly one.)

Photo: Chenin blanc, the grape used to make Vouvray, my favorite wine.

A Tale of Two Embassies

The man to your left, Craig Roberts Stapleton, is one of the most important figures in Franco-American relations. He is currently serving as US Ambassador to France. One would imagine that a major prerequisite for having such a post would be the ability to speak and understand French.

He can't.

Well, OK. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he's got another redeeming talent that earned him this position.

Nope.

It just so happens that not only did he give the GOP mountains of cash, but he also is related to Dubya.

The immediate past ambassador wasn't much better (although, having been no relation of Dubya's, I'm more inclined to be kinder to him) - Howard Leach. What a descriptive last name! Though he was born in Salinas, California, the setting for so many of John Steinbeck's great novels chronicling the trials and tribulations of the downtrodden, he never looked back. After giving $399,359 to the GOP from 1999 to 2000, he managed to buy himself perhaps the cushiest job in the world. A friend of mine had the opportunity to attend an event in Paris at which Mr. Leach was present. She said he was like a child, nodding and smiling, but saying nothing - because he simply couldn't. What a wonderful face to show to the world.

It's absolutely pathetic that these men who aren't even remotely qualified to hold these positions were given them simply based on the money they were able to contribute (or the family secrets they're using as blackmail...). There are thousands of people in this country who have devoted their lives to the study of foreign languages, and the stiff we have over there can't even buy himself a sandwich at McDo.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Jean-David Levitte, the French Ambassador to the US. Besides being generally better looking and probably in far better health, this man has impressive credentials, including fluency in several Asian languages. I have no doubt that he also speaks English. What a novel idea - an ambassador actually speaking the native language of his post!

What will they think of next?

'Arrie Poterre...Partie Deux

I have recently begun re-reading the Harry Potter series in French. I had planned to do this during my time in France--my little charge had even lent me his books--but I just never got around to it. I find that they are just as absorbing in French as in English; I had a very difficult time setting the book aside at the end of my lunch break today.

What fascinates me the most about reading these books in translation is that the invented words have a counterpart in French. For instance, "Muggle" comes out as "Moldu" in the French version. This makes me wonder whether or not J.K. Rowling came up with these words herself, or if the French translator did this. My instinctive guess would be that it is Rowling's doing, since she is a former French teacher. As it is, she's already based many of the existing characters' names on French words, most notably that of Lord Voldemort.

I wonder if I could get an answer to my question if I sent a letter to the publisher...