It's Official: I Hate French Films

I consider myself a Francophile. I love speaking the language. I've spent time living in France. I have studied university level French, and apparently speak convincingly with almost no accent, so I guess  that almost 30 years after my first visit to le beau pays, my spoken French is still not too shabby. More recently, I've been enjoying translating English songs into French.

I love French food (as long as too many wacky animal parts aren't involved). I love the French countryside. I love Paris in the Springtime. I even love the love. J'adores l'amour. I love the idea of watching French films on SBS (Australia's most significant multicultural television channel) so as to retain and hone my French language skills.But (with the exception of the animated series Miniscule, Delicatessan and the cult classic The Triplets of Belleville) I confess: absolutely CANNOT STAND most French movies themselves!

That's it, I swear, I've done my dash. Je m'en debarrasses. I expect nothing more than two hours of torture, unrequited love and petulance. Impossibly pouty,  Audrey Tautou-looking bra-less gauche girl-women being ravished by paedophile-minded men at least twice their age- repulsively ugly, severed headed, manipulative, sociopathic seducers.

I just watched this one, The Ring Finger, on SBS hoping to prove myself wrong. Granted, the plot was more unusual and interesting than usual, but it had that predictable air of under-stated French mystery about it. An all too familiar theme of the self-destructiveness of lost female souls. The done-to-death disturbed, misogynist, sado-masochistic eroticism throughout, the dream state where you don't know if something is happening in real time, in a past epoch, or being hallucinated. And  really lame ending. I mean I can't generally stand overstated, in-your-face, give it all away rather than leave it to the imagination, explain-every-joke Hollywood either, but less, as the pearl of wisdom goes, is not always more.

Merde! So, the Alliance Francaise can have my band for a bit of a tongue-in-cheek French sing-a-long, by all means. But they can shove their film festival la ou le soleil ne brille pas!