French Friday (French Saturday) #4

Ok, sorry about yesterday, but I felt so horrible. I feel pretty bad as well today so I'm just writing this in bed. 


This week at the film course, the topic was "Sex and Romance", and, I must admit, I was a little nervous about going with my mum. We watched a clip of "Lady Chatterley", which particularly interested me as I have read "Lady Chatterley's Lover" by D.H. Lawrence, on which the film is based. I thought that the use of sound in the clip we watched was particularly interesting as there wasn't any music, just the sound of birds. We also watched a bit of "Choses Secrètes", directed by Jean-Claude Brisseau, who was actually fined and given a one-year suspended prison sentence for sexually harassing two actresses who auditioned for the film. In 2006, he made a film based on this, called "Les anges exterminateurs". We watched other clips from "5x2", and "2 Days in Paris", but I thought the other two were the most interesting. At the course, we were also given an article about Paris's first X-rated film festival. It was very interesting, and talked about how the films shown weren't just "porn", as they changed the way people are portrayed in pornography, broke away from the clichés of it, and almost half of the films were made by and for women. 


Next week, we'll be watching the new film by Céline Sciamma, "Tomboy". It's her second film, her first being "Water Lilies" (we watched a little of this on Monday). From what I've read, it's about a young girl who moves into a flat with her family, and is mistaken for a boy. I'm really looking forward to it- it's not really like anything I've seen before so it should be interesting. 


Other than that...


I found out that we'll be studying Molière's "Le Tartuffe" along with Camus's "L'Étranger"! I'm really looking forward to this, and I'm hoping to finish reading the play this week so that I can write a review. So far, I'm enjoying it, and I understand some of the jokes in the film "Molière" than I did the first time I watched it (I'm planning on doing that review today, by the way).


Also, I've been researching French dialects a little over the past few days after watching an episode of "Fry's Planet Word" (which I think I mentioned in French Friday #2), in which Stephen Fry described how many French dialects are gradually being lost. He also talked about "L'Académie française" (The French Academy), which tries to stop words like "le hamburger" (English and American words that the French have adopted) from being used by the public. So, I'm thinking of writing about that at some point this week, watch this space!


That's all for now!
Caitlin