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EYE ON EUROPE |
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HOW SWEET IT WAS!
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La “douce France”:
Does it still exist?
By MICHAEL JOHNSON
of TheColumnists.com
The International History Film Festival, staged annually in Pessac, just outside of Bordeaux, has become a fixture on the calendar of cinema buffs, and dozens of new films are screened there every November. It’s a week-long event peppered with minor star turns and “café-débats” on related subjects.
Pessac isn’t Cannes but it’s an earnest event that deserves a nod for spotlighting serious films that otherwise might never be available to a broad public.
The general theme of the festival this year asked the question “Douce France?” (Sweet France?) drawn from the title of a popular romantic Charles Trenet song from the 1940s. Even today, virtually every French person can sing the refrain. (“Douce France, beau pays de mon enfance…”)
The winning film this year was “La Faute à Fidel” (Fidel’s Fault), a fictional yarn directed by Julie Gravas about a couple enmeshed in a series of left-wing causes in Europe and South America. In the documentary category the winner was “Cosa Nostra” directed by Marco Turco.
Entries this year were dominated by French movies, some of which will sink like stones and others that might have some commercial life in them. Historical themes out of Europe tend to be on the depressing side, however--wars, treachery, suffering, displacement, death.
I had the good fortune to be invited to join one of the panels with three other foreign Francophiles. We all relished our subject. It was like raw meat to a tiger: “France viewed from the outside.” We all had ready feelings.
When we were first asked to recall at what point we became besotted with France, I thought a few seconds and offered: “In 1958, when I saw Brigitte Bardot on the big screen taking her clothes off.” That was the truth.
Isn’t it funny how lives can be influenced by the movies? I went on to study the language, I married a French girl, twice worked as a journalist in France, and now have taken French citizenship and settled in Bordeaux. Without Brigitte I might have ended up selling farm implements in Delphi, Indiana.
The panel moderator, a switched-on television journalist named Sandrine Mörch, got serious, though, and asked us, “Does ‘Douce France’ still exist?” There is no easy answer. Alongside me were a Portuguese sociologist, a Syrian-born Kurd and a Congolese journalist. We all gave it a try.
Any attempt to describe a national personality is bound to end up being one person’s view. Few subjects are as complex. I advised a bit of humility in attempting to grasp such a theme, then I came down squarely on the fence.
There are infinite ways to categorize France and the French, only two of which I felt I could deal with:
France is the world’s favorite tourist
destination. Does this make it basically a giant theme park?
Possibly. Everyone comes for the food and drink, and many are
also attracted by the natural beauty of the long coastline, the
Pyrénées, the quaint villages, the cathedrals,
the rolling countryside, the geometrically planted vineyards,
the fields of sunflowers, the sunshine. They only see the top
layer of France but it is beautiful and it is definitely douce.
But a few years ago I decided I was being conned, and that there
was another France hidden from view. I accepted an offer to work
as editorial director of a French publisher and there I encountered
an ugly reality, the daily tension among themselves and between
employees and their superiors. I was one of the managers and
was constantly reminded by “la base” that I
had sold out to the devil. Management makes money for shareholders
and la base gets peanuts for its hard work, they explained.
There is a great deal of anger and hatred down there at la
base. Being cast in the role of the enemy was a bit of a
letdown after a happy career in editorial management in New York
and London, and I said so. The audience greeted my story with
stony silence.
But the discussion had its moments. One of the participants, Léon Awazi Kharomon, a lively young Congolese journalist, described how he, too, had become a Francophile at home after seeing a few French films. He noted that French movies tend to start in the kitchen and end in the dining room or bedroom.
When Léon made it to France, he recalled, he was disappointed to see that the men and women did not all look like Alain Delon and Brigitte Bardot. I felt an odd bond with him. Worse, having been raised as a devout Catholic, he was shocked to see half-dressed girls in the churches talking chirpily with the priests. Psychologists call this cognitive dissonance--an experience that simply cannot be understood by previous experience. Girls cover themselves in the Congo when they go to church.
I then accused the French of living in the past, in an imaginary cocoon, while the world around them learns to compete in global markets--Ireland and Spain being two successful cases of adaptation. But as a general rule the French resist change and would prefer to think small. They would like the future to be more like the past--a “douce France” that they recall from their enfance. As soon as I mentioned “douce France,” amazingly several people in the audience began singing the famous song. I could have stood up and led them in a full chorus but decided to ask for quiet and I pressed on.
Léon jumped on “globalization” as the root of all evil, noting that Africa is getting precious little from the trend. He made an emotional plea for an end to domination of the world economy by greedy big companies. Although patently naive, his views drew the biggest applause of the evening.
But the hottest topic was immigration, the movement of poor people from southern latitudes toward the more prosperous north all over the planet. This is at the top of the agenda as France prepares for April presidential elections. The conservative candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, wants tighter borders and strict job qualifications for anyone seeking French residency, and he has considerable support.
One of my co-debaters, Manuel Diaz, a retired Bordeaux sociologist, berated the audience, and by implication France, for abandoning its tradition as safe haven for people seeking a better life. Only the United States, he said, has been as welcoming to such people. (At last a kind word about the United States.) I backed him up, noting that diversity has always been at the root of American strengths.
When we shut down the discussion after two hours, several people approached us and continued to argue stubbornly for the French status quo. Maybe a few of them took away a fresh perspective but I doubt it.
My wife and I edged steadily toward the door. It was time for a late dinner, one of the more enjoyable attractions of “Douce France.”
©2006 by Michael Johnson. This column first posted Dec. 4, 2006.
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