French cliché

[smellingbottle]

I.’s job is in meltdown and as I sit at home wrangling with my book, I expect any minute to see him come in the door carrying the contents of his desk and rolling his eyes at being on ‘gardening leave’ - an expression that sounds even madder in central London than elsewhere. (And when used by a man who couldn’t tell a hydrangea from a hyacinth.) At

Comments

[hafren]

I am with a man who has just taken early retirement and happily kicked out a row of business suits from his wardrobe.... he did enjoy it!

[smellingbottle]

I. has had the ambition to take early retirement since he was about nineteen. I must confess the idea of donating a lot of suits to Oxfam has great appeal...

[helixaspersa]

I am completely with you on the horror that was "Chocolat". I find Binoche unwatchably irritating a lot of the time, though admittedly less so in French. I once saw a very odd film at the Phoenix with Kristin Scott-Thomas, among others, which was clearly an English version of the stock "French film". It didn't work at all, and was altogether a strange experience, rather as if dubbed.

[smellingbottle]

There's a newish French film with KST in it which I was planning to see, mostly out of curiosity, as I've never seen her act in French, and some French friends were impressed with her on stage in Racine a few years back. But it is entirely possible I will be unable to remove my Languid Period English Rose casting goggles....

Mind you, I recently saw a truly awful French film set in an unrecognisably white and tidy London, which was pretty much French Richard Curtis and excruciating.

[helixaspersa]

I can imagine her being good in Racine. She has an ear for verse I think, which you'd certainly need, and I can imagine her style and poise being quite Racine-friendly somehow. I'm not sure I've actually *seen* her being a Languid English Rose though, unless you count 'The English Patient'. She was my icon and model for a possible settling-in-Paris future years ago when I had a French boyfriend, J., who was quite keen to marry me. Eventually I was forced to admit that I was more enchanted by the place and the language than by him, unfortunately (and also, even more unfortunately, still in love with the First Boyfriend of Doom who had, coincidentally, been sitting in front of me in the cinema during the end-of-term school cinema trip to see 'The English Patient', meaning I still can't watch the film with equanimity, 12 years later

[smellingbottle]

Yes, I recently caused a drawing aside of skirts at a seminar on My Modernist by saying I thought his early work was utter nonsense - which I stand by, it is absolute codswallop (albeit for interesting reasons) and not all his later brilliance should blind us to the fact. I may, however, have difficulty slipping such sentiments into something I've just been asked to write on said stuff. Ho hum.

I suppose I do think of KST in terms of The English Patient, A Handful of Dust and Gosford Park, which I think is one of the reasons I'd be interested to see her in a French film.

[fox_in_sand]

How I wish I lived close to the BFI, I would practically live in it.