Like a butterfly coming out of its cocoon. Well, that might be the wrong image. Like an old bear coming out of its den to see if winter is over. That's a better image. I'm talking about myself.
Yesterday before lunch I went out to cut some sprigs of rosemary, thyme, and green onion for a Thai coconut-milk soup I was making. A couple of people about my age came walking down the road from the direction of the vineyard.
Two views of sunset on 16 January 2011 at La Renaudière
I called out « bonjour »to them and said: « Il fait beau, n'est-ce pas ? » In fact the sun was downright warm on my shoulders, and it was a fine morning. I felt almost mild enough to have lunch outdoors on the terrace.
« Oui, on revoit enfin le soleil », the woman said. « C'est tellement agréable. » Finally we're getting to see the sun again. It is so very pleasant.
Out in the yard near sunset yesterday
I didn't take any pictures in the morning, but I did take some on the afternoon walk with Callie. The organized deer hunt had moved on to other areas by afternoon, so the vineyard was no longer a no man's land. I don't know if the hunters actually shot any deer, but we did hear some loud gunshots early in the day, before the dozen or so cars parked out by the maison de vigneron drove away.
Not only did we get to see the sun yesterday, but a daytime moon was shining as well.
Okay, it's supposed to rain this afternoon, and the weather woman on TéléMatin just told me it's going to get cold again starting Wednesday. But there's no doubt about it now: the sun is still there in the sky, just waiting for a chance to shine again.
P.S.: Nine a.m. I just saw one of the most gorgeous sunrises that I've seen in a long long time. It was all wispy and puffy clouds in pastel pinks and purples on a pale blue background. It lasted for 45 minutes, the whole time I was out walking. It was other-worldly — the kind of scene that makes you wonder whether you are really still on Earth, or if you've been transported to a distant, more spectacular planet. You'll have to take my word for it, though. I neglected to put my camera in my pocket when I headed out the door.
We seem to be having a few days of clear weather right now. By clear, I mean not raining, with a few rays of sunshine in the afternoon. In fact, it's sunny this Sunday morning, but there's a layer of fog right at ground level.
Gray skies over the Renaudière vineyard yesterday morning — our house and hamlet are in the far distance.
Yesterday morning there was some blue sky too, so I took my camera out with me on the walk with Callie. As soon as I got a few hundred meters from the house out on the gravel road through the vineyard, a thick layer of gray clouds rolled in and completely blocked out the sun.
Sunrise over the vines, 15 January 2011
I cut the walk short because there was a chilly wind blowing and it felt like it might start raining at any moment. It didn't rain, however, and the sun came out in the afternoon. A friend came over for apéros in the evening and we went outside with her dog and Callie. We marveled at how mild it was for a mid-January evening.
A closer view of the hamelt called La Renaudière, near Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher in the Loire Valley region
Walt just came back from the walk this morning and reported that there are about a dozen hunters out in the vineyard. They are having what is called une battue — an organized hunt. They "beat the bushes" to flush out the game. The hunters are after roe deer — the small European deer called chevreuils (Capreolus capreolus) in French. There are a lot of them around here, and it's a reality that the populations need to be kept under control. Chevreuil meat — venison, or venaison de chevreuil — is also good to eat.
Moles, unlike gophers (which we don't have in France), eat only grubs, bugs, and worms, not the roots of plants.
Now that the weather is nicer, I'm going to have to force myself to go outdoors and do some cleanup work around the yard. There are leaves to rake, bushes to trim, and mole hills to tamp down. The moles have been having a field day in one particular section of the yard. The landscape out there resembles a range of mini-volcanoes. There are more mole hills every day.
The title Père et fils is ambiguous in French. It can mean "father and son," or "father and sons." Un fils (singular) or des fils (plural). In the case of this film title, it's the second meaning. There is one father, Léo, who is played by the late great French actor Philippe Noiret, and there are three sons, including one played by Charles Berling.
Berling's character and one of the other two sons are not on speaking terms. They had a falling-out years ago, and Noiret as their father, Léo, is trying to get them back together as he approaches old age. He invites them both to a birthday dinner, but doesn't tell either that the other is invited. When they both show up, it gets tense.
A few days later, Léo suffers a malaise — he collapses on the stairs in his apartment building one day. He winds up in the hospital, where his brother is his doctor. The doctor-brother declares that Léo in in fine health. But Léo decides to tell his three sons that he doesn't have long to live. He asks the three of them to take a trip to Quebec with him to see the whales there. He had seen the whales in a documentary on TV while he was hospitalized.
Here Philippe Noiret talks about the genesis of the film Père et fils, its theme, and a little about what it was like to act in it. It's a pleasure to listen to his French.
No matter that it isn't whale-viewing season, which one of his sons helpfully points out. He just wants to spend time with his three sons. The adventures of these four Frenchmen in Canada are the substance of the movie. And of course Léo's more or less clumsy attempts to reconcile the two feuding sons. In addition, the four of them somehow meet a French Canadian woman who is a kind of faith-healer, and they spend time with her and her daughter at a house far out in the Quebec countryside. Toward the end of the film, look for the great scene with the whale...
I think this is a very funny movie and the language-listening is great. Phillipe Noiret (1930-2006) was, and Charles Berling still is, among the very best of French film actors. Noiret acted in more than 100 films from the late 1940s until his death, including L'Horloger de Saint-Paul (1974), Coup de torchon (1981), Les Ripoux (1984), J'embrasse pas (1991)... to name just a very few. And Berling, who is in his early 50s, is still going strong, after appearing in at least 50 films, including Nelly et Monsieur Arnaud (1995), Ridicule (1996), and Ceux qui m'aiment prendront le train (1998).
The director of Père et fils (2003) is Michel Boujenah, who is a successful comic actor as well — in Trois Hommes et un couffin (1985), for example.
Yesterday I re-watched, for the first time in a while, the very first movie — or should that be film? — that I ever saw in France. It was 1970, and I had arrived in Aix-en-Provence with a group of American students a few weeks earlier.
Some of the teachers who worked for the study abroad program organized the outing. I'm sure I had never been inside a movie theater in France before that. The film was called Les Choses de la vie, and it was directed by Claude Sautet (Paris 1924-2000). Its release seemed to be a big event in France, or at least in Aix. The movie theater was packed.
The only French movie I remember seeing before my first trip to France was Un Homme et une femme, Claude Lelouche's movie with Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimée. I saw that one in a little movie theater in Raleigh, North Carolina, when I was still in high school. I thought it was intriguing — the language, the scenery in Paris and Normandy, all of it. It just made me want to come to France as soon as I could figure out how.
The actors in Sautet's 1970 film were Michel Piccoli (born in Paris in 1925) and Romy Schneider (born in 1938 in Vienna). In the story, they are a couple but he has been, or is still maybe, married earlier to Catherine (Léa Massari, born in 1933 in Rome). Piccoli decides to end his relationship with Schneider and writes her a letter to tell her. He is driving back from Brittany to Paris when he changes his mind.
This is what they call the « bande annonce »
for Les Choses de la vie (1970).
He calls and leaves her a message with her answering service, asking her to meet him in Rennes (Brittany) at a hotel. He has the "Dear John" letter in his pocket. Then he has a terrible automobile accident along the road. He is lying, bloody, seemingly unconscious, in a field, as police and medical personnel arrive.
He isn't unconscious, though. His brain is functioning. And he keeps thinking: I have to destroy that letter. Then an ambulance arrives and takes him to the hospital. His wife (or ex-wife) Catherine arrives there first. Romy Schneider is on her way...
I'll stop there. I don't want to spoil the ending.
Claude Sautet's films are some of my favorite French movies. Several feature Schneider, and one of the best is called Une Histoire simple (1978). It also features Claude Brasseur and, especially, Bruno Crémer, an actor who died last year.
Another good Sautet film is Un Cœur en hiver (1992), with Daniel Auteuil, André Dussolier, and Emmanuelle Béart. (I'll say this for Evelyn: the two main characters are luthiers, in other words violin-makers. Evelyn will know why I'm telling her this.) Un Cœur simple is what is called in French un drame psychologique, and it's a story of a fairly mysterious love triangle.
One more Sautet film is up high on my list, and it's called Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud (1995). I first saw it on an airplane back then, and afterward Walt and I went to see it in a movie theater in Avignon. Its stars are the late, great actor named Michel Serrault, who is best known for his outlandish performance in La Cage aux folles. In Nelly, he is another character completely.
Here's the bande annonce for Nelly et Monsieur Arnaud.
Nelly in the film is again played by Emmanuelle Béart. She is a young woman whose marriage has not worked out and who goes to work for M. Arnaud (Serrault), a friend of a friend. Her job is to transcribe a book he is writing — his memoirs. He of course falls in love with her, but there is no romance involved. There are several other good characters involved in the plot, one of whom is played by the Anglo-French actor Michael Lonsdale, another by Jean-Hugues Anglade, and Nelly's estranged husband by Charles Berling. Nelly et Monsieur Arnaud is a quintessentially Parisian film, and it was Sautet's last.
Sautet made other great films: César et Rosalie (1972), for example, with Yves Montand, again Romy Schneider, Samy Frey, Isabelle Huppert, and others. A lot of it takes place on the island of Noirmoutier, on the French Atlantic coast. There was also Vincent, François, Paul... et les autres (1974), with Montand, Serge Reggiani, and again Michel Piccoli, as well as Stéphane Audran (one of the finest French actresses) and Gérard Depardieu (then a very young man). Most of Sautet's films deal with the middle class, and the working people in them tend to be managers or business owners.
Finally, Un Mauvais Fils (1980), with the late Patrick Dewaere alongside Yves Robert and Brigitte Fossey, is the story of a young man who comes back from the U.S., where he had drug problems and did prison time. He tries to rebuild his relationship with his widowed father. He ends up working in a factory and meeting a woman who is also a recovering addict. Un Mauvais Fils was a departure for Sautet, dealing with grittier, working-class issues and characters, and a younger generation.
Here are some scenes from Un Mauvais Fils,
with analysis by a couple of French film critics.
These are not action films. Except for the car accident in Les Choses de la vie, there are few spectacular events. If you let yourself get drawn in, however, you can get the feeling you are living life alongside Sautet's characters. If you watch these movies, remember that French films seldom have what the French call le happy end that you get in American movies.
If you want to get a feel for French life between 1970 (or earlier) and the mid-1990s, and see what it looked like for the middle class in Paris and in the provinces in those days, watch Claude Sautet's movies. I put the DVDs on over and over again.
There was a lot of competition in movies back in 1970 — M*A*S*H, Woodstock, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, Fellini's Satyricon, The Boys in the Band, ... just to name a few. But for me, the most memorable one was Sautet's Les Choses de la vie. I wonder if you can get that one and the others from Netflix.
Two views of sunset on 16 January 2011 at La Renaudière
I called out « bonjour »to them and said: « Il fait beau, n'est-ce pas ? » In fact the sun was downright warm on my shoulders, and it was a fine morning. I felt almost mild enough to have lunch outdoors on the terrace.
Out in the yard near sunset yesterday
Not only did we get to see the sun yesterday,
