Foot in mouth syndrome

This week was the last French class of the term. I was full of enthusiasm, having viewed many French movies over the course of the last two weeks. I can't remember if I mentioned here, that the Alliance Française has had a big film festival running throughout the country. I saw many movies, and going to class this week, I was still riding a wave of pseudo-Frenchness. I'd been transported through a plethora of emotional experiences, times, and places. And, to cap it off, in many films I actually understood a lot of the French, and noticed that the subtitles did not always work with the dialogue being spoken.

One thing our teacher does each session is ask who has been to restaurants or the cinema, and tries to coax some sort of conversation out of students. Sometimes I am too shy to speak up. Some weeks, especially if I have been up working since 6 in the morning, I am terrified that he will pick on me to speak. Often it feels as though the French is there, in my head, but as soon as I open my mouth it is as though I have contracted some mysterious disease that steals the words and messes around with my brain. What spills out of my mouth is just plain embarrassing. But this week, like the good little student I aspire to be, I spoke up. I said I had seen many films and proceeded to list those I could remember, showing off a bit with Director's names and so on, where I could. I decided to try and explain a movie that I thought the other students may not have seen, one that my daughter and I both loved, though we were quite introspective and a little sad for hours afterwards.

The movie was La Vie Moderne, a beautiful documentary filmed in the Haut-Garonne region. The cinematography is just amazing, and the subject matter dealt with with such respect and empathy, that I don't imagine anybody could not be moved by the film. I felt as though I had been privileged enough to be invited into the lives of the farmers of the area; beautiful, proud people, who handle the reality of the decline of their way of life with such dignity.

I am not going to review the film or reveal too much of the story. I prefer to talk about the emotional responses to movies or music here on the blog. I do enough formal writing in my everyday life. I am just going to say, if you get the opportunity, you MUST see this film.




So, without giving too much away, there is a moment in the film where it is mentioned that with the decline of the farming way of life, that farms are being closed, and entire villages in the districts are being transformed into a place for the more fortunate to have their holiday homes. Now, obviously life cannot remain the same forever, the world changes, and lifestyles have to be reconsidered and reinvented. But while watching the film, I just could not help thinking of how utterly heartbreaking and soul-destroying it must be to walk away. I found myself trying to imagine how difficult it must be to leave behind something that has been an integral part of who you are, a place that has seen generations of births, deaths, and everything that comes in between. And, I am afraid I was also a little ashamed at the all consuming daydreams I sometimes have about finding the perfect abandoned property in rural France, and making it mine. For, I had never once stopped to think about any of the people who'd previously inhabited my fantasy derelict property in the midst of that daydreaming time.

But, as per normal, I digress. Back in the French lesson, I told the basic elementary language skill-level version of the subject matter of the documentary, with assistance from my ever-patient French teacher. But when I reached the point where I tried to explain about the film being, . . . très triste, il m'a fait pleurer, I had to stop. Je suis désolé, mais. . . . . . I cannot say any of the next part in French, I garbled. Then, in my bumbling fashion I spilt out how sad it was that these farms and villages have become little more than towns for the wealthy English people to buy holiday homes.

This is where it gets tricky:

I have no idea really, about the truth of that statement. I based it purely on an emotional response to the film. I was almost crying as I explained (in English, for I cannot 'do' emotional outbursts in French) about these rural people and their disappearing way of life. I picked up a line or two here and there from the film, and from that created a narrative about the people who'd moved into the region. I guess, in my defence, it is what I do. One of my 'real jobs' entails writing fiction. I guess on a base level, that means I make stuff up. And, sometimes I get caught up in the worlds that are working themselves into existence inside my head.

But, maybe I should have stuck to the facts, especially when one couple (bloody hell, and they HAD to be English, didn't they?) told me that they were going 'back' to that very region next week to stay with their (probably perfectly lovely) English friends in their renovated holiday house that used to be a farm.

Oh well, go Me. Remove foot from mouth, and proceed to offend, yet again.

***

On an aside, nobody in my class had seen the film. In fact, nobody in my class had seen any of the festival films. That surprised me. I thought people would jump at the opportunity.