French Movie Night - My Afternoons with Margueritte

Happy Valentines Day.  Hopefully you and yours are spending the day in appreciation of the wondrous love which is shared among you.  Personally, I have spent the day eating two slices of Boston Cream Pie in one sitting and watching a documentary on the Amish, but that is neither here nor there.  I also scored a free frappucino by walking into Starbucks with perfect timing to benefit from a mis-prepared order just before me.  Happy Valentines Day to me!

In any case, I have recently come to consider Valentines Day not with the woeful misery that befalls many of us singletons on the 14th, but as a time to appreciate and remember the general love in the world - not just between romantic partners, but among all manner of people.  So it seems a fitting time to write a post that I have been meaning to write for some time, about a French film called My Afternoons with Margeuritte.

The French title for the film is actually La Tete en Friche, which for all my foreign language prowess I had a bit of a hard time understanding.  The best translation I can come up with is "The Fallow Mind," which obviously requires an understanding of agriculture to fully grasp.  No wonder the English translators came up with a more universal name...I assume that the French may have an idiomatic familiarity with en friche that isn't easily translated to English.

The film centers on an unlikely friendship that is forged between Germain, a hulking uneducated man in rural France, and Margueritte, a delicate elderly woman with a penchant for literature.  Germain and Margueritte meet in the park one day, where they are both engaged in the unusual task of counting pigeons, making sure that none of the 19 birds are missing from the flock.  They strike up a conversation when Margeuritte, quoting Albert Camus, challenges Germain to imagine a town without pigeons, which Germain adamently says couldn't exist.  Every day following, Germain, who cannot read, meets Margueritte in the park and she reads to him.  And so the illiterate Germain suddenly becomes familiar with the great works of French literature, explores the dictionary that Margueritte gives him ("You travel with a dictionary, from one word to the next, to our dreams..."), and their friendship develops a deep bond of love that makes the two nearly inseparable.  So much that, when Margeuritte is moved to a nursing home in another city due to failing vision and financial difficulties, Germain busts her out jailbreak-style in one of the most enjoyable movie moments I've seen in French cinema.  It's a wonderful little movie, full of raw emotion, classic literature, and the oft-necessary reminder that love can be found anywhere.

Happy Valentines Day!

"It's not a typical love affair, but love and tenderness, both are there.  Named after a daisy she lived amongst words, surrounded by adjectives in green fields of verbs.  Some force you yield to.  But she, with soft art, passed through my hard shield and into my heart.  Not always are love stories just made of love.  Sometimes love is not named, but it's love just the same.  This is not a typical love affair; I met her on a bench in my local square.  She made a little stir, tiny like a bird with her gentle feathers.  She was surrounded by words, some as common as myself.  She gave me books, two or three.  Their pages have come alive for me.  Don't die now, you've still got time, just wait.  It's not the hour, my little flower.  Give me some more of you.  More of the life in you.  Wait.  Not always are stories just made of love.  Sometimes love is not named.  But it's love just the same." - Gerard Depardieu's character, Germain, about Gisele Casadesus's character, Margueritte...with two t's.