I was stoked because I have a slight silly obsession with Occitanie, a region in France. It all started when I discovered the store L'Occitane en Provence in New Jersey. It's a cosmetics shop with luscious perfumes, soaps and lotions. I loved it even before I had any interest in French, back when I used to butcher the pronunciation of the name something awful. When I first got here and saw one of these stores, I thought I was about to walk into heaven. I thought, if the L'Occitanes in America are as beautiful as they are, I can't imagine what they'll actually be like in France. To my disappointment (at the time), they are exactly the same. The owners like to keep the same authentic feel in all of their stores. As much as I wanted a super-store, I know I'll appreciate this when I go home. I'll know that I can go into any L'Occitane in the world and it will be just like the ones here.
Anyway, after Christmas I started reading this quite massive book about the French, and one of the chapters is on regional dialects. And there's one called Langue d'Oc that originated in this area. And I would love to hear this type of language spoken and compare it to French now that I can understand French.
So now that we all know how excited I was to see this movie, we can get to the good stuff! But not immediately, because the movie was not so good, in my opinion. It was the story of Chateaubriand, a famous writer in the 19th century, and his final love. Nice story, but boring for me. The movie lacked action. It was mostly just scenes from one room at one time. All conversation. How am I supposed to follow something like that? Yeah, I got the gist, but there were so many words I didn't get. Add to that the fact that there was some Langue d'Oc phrases, and that they spoke fast sometimes, and I'm actually surprised at how well I did understand. The movie was not the best, but I was thrilled that I got to meet the director! Based on the search results I got, I don't think Jean Périssé is actually too well known here. But he did get to work with Bernard le Coq, who is apparently hot stuff in these parts, though I've never heard of any of the films on his imdb list. And you know, it was the same for Chateaubriand, the subject of the film. His wikipedia entry says he is considered the founder of French romanticism, yet I've never heard of him! When we asked the director why he's so important, he told us that to understand, we would have to imagine Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, and Johnny Hallyday all rolled into one. And that's how huge this guy was during his time. I don't know. I'm going to have to check out his work for myself.
I had fun last night. And I want to meet more artists. And Jean Périssé signed something for me. Triple rock.
1 comment:
Hiya!
I think you should spent some time in the south of France basically in the Alpes-Maritimes. I was raised there. Although socially I use a Parisian accent as "passe-partout" (....).
in private I speak French with some occitan flavoured dialect and accent.Although the real dialect has been pretty much extinct, we largerly incorporate italo and spanish influences in our dialect.
I hope you are having a good time in Paris, the south is much more cooler and quiter then Paris. I still wonder how people manage to live up there.
PS. I pulled the link of your blog through raciali....
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