So far I've been using this blog mostly for navel-gazing and long winded explanations of my convoluted life situation at the moment. But because at this point in the summer I've been reduced to quietly going insane while waiting for Peace Corps to call me or email me about where or when I am going, I am trying to find ways to busy myself. One of them involves cleaning out my room and continuing to get rid of things, and this weekend while doing so I found a long-forgotten journal from a few years ago. Contained inside were random notes and writings, including a hurried entry about an old movie that became a new favorite. It's a 1960's French film called La Vie de Chateau, starring Catherine Deneuve at her girl-womanly best. The English title is "A Matter of Resistance", which speaks to the film's setting during the French Resistance, in 1944 or 1945. Catherine's character, Marie, lives in a crumbling old chateau with her new husband. Bored with country life and longing for the glitz and action of Paris, she meets a handsome French Resistance fighter and is smitten. However, a German patrol stations themselves at the chateau, and soon their commanding officer starts desperately trying woo Marie. The movie is pretty much as funny as a movie can get when the plot involves Nazi soldiers and war-torn France. I was trying to analyze why I liked it so much, and what I realized is that it pretty much has all the things I love: stories of WWII bravery, French country houses, apples, Calvados, cute bicycles, and of course, a romance. It also has a memorable scene of Marie looking unfeasibly gorgeous at breakfast, eating thick slices of buttered boule dipped into a steaming bowl of cafe au lait-- it's a food movie without even trying to be. Also, I am 99% sure that the sound clip in the middle of the Beirut song "Nantes" is taken from this movie.
Unfortunately it's a pretty hard film to track down. Netflix hasn't had the DVD in years, though I believe Blockbuster has it in their online collection. I've had my eye on movie poster on eBay for a while, so if anyone feels like buying me a gift....
