It may be a cliché but that doesn’t mean it’s not true – the French really are sexier than us. Or so believes Gaw in the wake of a holiday revelation.
A Good Year is a 2006 film starring Russell Crowe as a banker who inherits a wine-making estate in Provence. Despite his Anglo-Saxon obnoxiousness he manages to fall in love with his inheritance as well as a local girl played by Marion Cotillard (top – the estate wasn’t bad either), becoming an ex-banker in the process.
At least one critic compared it to an extended Renault Clio advert (remember Nicole and Papa?), checking off pretty much every cliché in the book. But when I recently watched it on holiday in Provence I was struck by how realistic a portrayal it was. If anything a little understated.
Of course, the setting really is as beautiful as cinema makes it look. But they also do things differently in France, they really do. Especially sex romance.
A day or two before seeing A Good Year I had recounted to me a story that had rocked the nearby village. A local 82-year-old woman had returned to where she’d grown up in Normandy for a funeral. There she’d met a childhood sweetheart. On her return she abruptly decided to leave her cycling-obsessed husband – spry but tedious – for the object of her renewed passion.
Not too unremarkable. But what surely gives it a distinctive savour is that the lady telling me this tale knew that something was going on before our octogenarienne upped sticks. She’d entered the town’s lingerie shop to find her elderly neighbour picking out a few racy items. She assumed they were for her grand-daughter but the lady took a couple of armfuls of silk and lace (red/black and green/black), disappeared into a changing room and beckoned a sales assistant. Apparently quite a lot of loudly discussed fitting went on. Totally shameless.
After which, one imagines: “Nicole?” “Maman?” …shortly before the old girl speeds northwards in her Clio, a suitcase full of naughties in the boot.
I claim no particular knicker expertise, domestic or international. But aren’t the particulars of this scandale almost unimaginable in England?
Oui
Not a practical race, the French: cotton and elastic answers much better at a tenth the price. Silk and Lace, indeed! I ask you……………..
Recusant, you’re sounding rather puritanical.
God forbid, for an old Cavalier like me. Just happened to have stepped out with three French ladies – delightful in many aspects – who all cost me an absolute bloody fortune in flimsy lingerie.
I don’t know whether to be impressed or slightly perturbed
Both?
impreturbed?
Got your back on this one, Gaw, with some HISTORIC EVIDENCE. From a 1919 booklet I was reading yesterday about the psychological impact of being a prisoner of war in 1914-18:
(From Barbed Wire Disease: a psychological study of the prisoners of war A.L. Vischer (London: John Bale, Sons, and Danielsson, Ltd 1919)
Same age and everything! Almost. That’s you, that is, Frenchie…
– should you ever come across a copy, grab it: fascinating and serious account drawn from hundreds of interviews etc, leavened by often hilariously prejudicial footnotes inserted by a British doctor keen to emphasise the differences between the Europeans and our fine strapping young lads)
I can’t work out if this is a compliment or a slur – is the doctor suggesting that english men have no problem with ‘being mother’
So, the war was won not on the playing fields but in the dormitories of Eton…
Thanks James!
(How many blogs give you that sort of deep historical background to posts on the underwear purchasing habits of elderly French ladies?)
One and one alone – the irrepressible and irreplaceable Dabbler.
I watched this film on a flight a few years back and wanted to stab myself in the face.
It almost being the anniversary, Madamemoiselle Cotillard’s membership of that foul brigade of 9/11 Truthers should be counted as a black spot against her.
Oh God, really? That’s put me right off her.