Paul from Paris

Today is a holiday in France: Ascension Day. It's a Christian holiday, but most churches in France are more empty than full. Like other holidays that France marks in May, Ascension Day is a reason (or pretext) for taking a long weekend. 

Acts with and towards strangers speak volumes.

I ducked out this afternoon and went to a nearby "superette" (a compact urban supermarket) with two registers, only one of which was operating. It was mid-afternoon, and there were few customers at the shop. I picked up some drinks to stock my refrigerator and took my place behind a shopper, a middle-aged woman with a small cartfull of groceries.

A harried woman came up, a prepackaged sandwich in hand. Clearly, her lunch hour had come and gone without lunch, and she was trying to make up during a coffee break. She asked whether she could cut ahead of me in line. This was fine with me. The woman ahead of me, however, acted as if she were offended: "I really don't have the time. I'm in a hurry." The cashier seemed ready to oblige the sandwich buyer, but the other shopper held her ground: "I'm really pressed for time."

The sandwich shopper, discouraged, started back to the sandwich cooler, I assume to replace her sandwich. Suddenly, a second cashier appeared and said she could ring up the sandwich: price €1.11, transaction time under ten seconds.

Another shopper, who'd arrived in the meantime behind me, started to dash for the second register. The cashier helpfully (to me) cut her short, saying in my direction "Monsieur ?" She rang up my four bottles, at a per unit price of €1.54. The total came to €7.00. I asked wither she could check the price. The impatient shopper behind me exclaimed, to no one in particular, "The price is seven euros!". But the cashier saw that the price per bottle really was €1.54 and that I had four identical bottles, so the total really was less than €7.00, a mere €6.16.

I can live with petty discourtesies and harried shoppers. But my thoughts go out to those, like these cashiers, who must endure berating treatment from customers every day. I'm hard-headed, but soft-hearted.

Management and workers’ representatives made a last-minute deal yesterday to “save” 133 jobs at Caterpillar’s French site near Grenoble.

The deal is conditional on a subsequent agreement on working hours, to be ironed out in the coming months. But most French headlines read, “133 jobs saved at Caterpillar.” Another point was buried beneath the lead: 600 employees will be terminated, their jobs lost.

A pessimist will say that the glass is half-empty. An optimist will say that it’s half-full. I like to think of myself as a realist, and I think that both sides in this long-running labor conflict are misguided.

The workers –and, I’d argue, much of the French media– are living through industrial nostalgia. There’s plenty of industry in France: aeronautics, pharmaceuticals, machine tools, automobiles, chemistry, steelmaking and aluminum production. But does anyone really expect job growth in industrial activities? I think not. Those who applaud the retained Caterpillar jobs, I’d argue, are looking back on a receding past.

I’d also argue that Caterpillar management, as it speaks through its French representatives and institutional communications, is living in a dreamy future of its own imagination. Caterpillar’s institutional tagline: Ready for business. Ready for action. Ready for tomorrow. That’s clever, sort of. But it’s generic, and could just as easily describe a new movie opening at the multiplex. I have trouble squaring the slogan with plant closures. And I question the commercial viability in France of Caterpillar-branded merchandise (gloves, boots).

Here’s the real challenge: offering a worthwhile future, a preferential alternative, to the 600 families confronted by the disappearance of their jobs.

OSS 117: Rio ne répond plus (in English: OSS 117: Lost in Rio) is a funny French comedy that’s doing well at the box office, buoyed by favorable reviews and word-of-mouth. It’s a fun movie.

OSS 117 is the code name of a French
secret agent, Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath. He stars in a long-running espionage thriller series penned in
the postwar years (starting in 1949, before Ian Fleming introduced
James Bond). I’ve never read an OSS 117 book, widely considered as
suitable reading for a train trip or a beach vacation. In the 1960s,
some of the OSS 117 stories were brought to the screen by director
André Hunebelle.

Forty years later, the OSS 117 franchise returned to the screen, in OSS 117: Le Caire, nid d’espions (English title: OSS 177: Cairo, nest of spies). This picture (re)introduced moviegoers to OSS 117, and was a star vehicle for Jean Dujardin, who’d become widely known through a TV series. I found OSS 117: Cairo, nest of spies overlong, and thought it could have benefited from additional editing. For this viewer, the follow-up picture, OSS 117: Lost in Rio, is funnier and can be viewed without having first seen the Cairo picture.

Those who’ve seen both Ocean’s Eleven (2001, starring Clooney) and Ocean’s Eleven (1960, starring Sinatra) will understand the mood of OSS 117: Lost in Rio. The picture takes for granted that the viewer has already seen James Bond, and Austin Powers; there’s no need to explain the set-up or convention of the spy genre.

As secret agent Hubert, actor Dujardin plays a spoof with a straight face. It’s reto-humor. The picture is set in 1967, and plays up historical particularities of the late Gaullist period in France. Dujardin’s Hubert is full of himself, and incompetent. Hubert suffers from: colonialism, racism, sexism, anti-semitism, homophobia, chauvinism (he doesn’t understand a word of English, including profane insults) and conservatism (he hates hippies). But the picture makes fun of these flaws, viewed at forty years’ remove. The story has only slight importance: it involves a hunt for a Nazi.

OSS 117: Lost in Rio has fabulous atmospherics. The locations are shot in an unusual color palette (bright colors, but faded or sepia-toned). The costumes and décor elements delight the eye.

I hope OSS 117: Lost in Rio overcomes language barriers and finds an audience beyond France. Here’s the trailer (in French):

The Cannes Film Festival opened last week. I attended the festival for years –I love cinema and worked with clients in the motion picture business– but tired of what seemed, to me, a monotonous and vaguely incestuous selection: lots of serious films, and a musical chairs situation among directors and jury members (where one year's palm winner became next year's jury member).

In France, people seem to take for granted public (meaning: taxpayer-funded) support for filmmaking. There are a bewildering array of tax-and-spend policies in place, and a novel scheme always seems to be in the pipeline.

Much of the public assistance seems to be based on the premise that a serious film can't succeed in the marketplace, in other words that seriousness will result in financial loss. A corollary holds that financially successful pictures aren't serious.

The French seem to have trouble taking comedies seriously. But historically, comedies have ranked among French box office champions:

• Bienvenu chez les ch'tis (2008, my preferred English title: Welcome to the Sticks), a fish-out-of-water story about a French "southerner" who finds himself among French "northerners", the all-time French box office champ;
• Les Visiteurs (1993), where sorcery transports a medieval knight and his servant to the present day;
• La Grande vadrouille (1966), a war comedy (if such a thing is possible) starring Louis de Funès, a French national icon; it was until last year the French box office champ.

Another French comedy has been doing well at the box office, supported by favorable reviews and strong word-of-mouth: OSS 117: Rio ne répond plus (in English: OSS117: Lost in Rio). It's a funny picture, but devilishly hard to explain. I'll try to do this in my next post.