The Art of French Love

I just finished watching Amelie (2001), and I am still somewhat dazzled. Whimsical and full of color, it was a French fairy tale played out on the neatly-paved streets of Paris.

Critics before me have pointed out that everything about it- the characters, the plot, the scenery- is unrealistic. The Paris of Amelie is portrayed as this haven of coffee-drinking White people, wandering about like teenagers preoccupied with thoughts of amor.

However, one cannot help but be charmed by the surreal world of love and all things good and beautiful the movie creates. A world of small details and happy endings. So I guess it is no wonder that Amelie became a big hit, especially in the French-speaking parts of the world. It also won a bunch of awards including a bagful of Academy Award nominations including those for the Best Art Director, Best Sound and Best Foreign Film.

But I decided I won't do review of this one. Instead, let me take you on a train of thought. Amelie was too full of "dafuq?" moments. In spite of the face-palms, I was a ball of giggles, clutching my pillow and rolling around on my mattress by the end of it. That is when I realized that this was a different kind of love story. It was a French love story. And that made all the difference.

I was born in the heart of European mainland (and perhaps the seeds of European-freedom are blooming somewhere inside me still- think nude beaches), but I was raised South Asian and educated British (note- Britain is not Europe. Know the difference.) And like everyone of my generation, I came of age infused with all things America.

I wonder sometimes if my fallings and failings in love would have been different if I hadn't been raised on Dawson's Creek and Sweet Valley Highs. (Full of stories of teenage love and other acts of hormone-induced sodomy, these books with pouty-lipped girls on glossy covers were absolutely forbidden on the premises of the ultra-Buddhist girls' school I attended. But of course we always found ways to sneak 'em in).

That is how we learnt of Love. How to find it, how to keep it and how to lose it- we learnt all that and more. I remember my amusement when I learned some nonsense in the Princess Diaries movie about your foot popping up when you kiss for the first time. All that happened to me the first time was the bits of pizza that were between his teeth were somehow not there after. And that is disgusting.

The scripts we follow in life we pick up from around us. I learn these things in the classes I take but let me try not to bore you with academic details.

Basically, we learn from around us, try these things out, and gather the reactions of the world. That is how we learn to behave, to conform, to function as humans. But this mechanism of learning changes when we start picking up from artificial worlds- movies, paperbacks and other things fake. We play out roles conceived in some balding scriptwriters fantasies and try to mold our lives into the shells we are made to believe we belong in. The I-love-yous we say, the gifts we give on mothers' day and sounds we make at orgasm we pick up from this Platonic idealistic world of Hollywood. (To speak nothing of the American porn industry that has become the world's Hitchhikers Guide to the Bedroom. Didn't we all, at some point, learn to do it like they do on the Discovery Channel?)

I imagine I would be a whole different person if those impressionable years of my life had been filled with more Bollywood. May be instead of writing I would have been singing, dancing and planning a big wedding now.

Allow me to take my imagination further. To me, the Art of French Love, at least judging from Amelie, revolves more around passion. Love at first sight instead of the detailed, derailed relationships everyone seems to have problems with. French love to me seems young- a free fall of emotions. May be that is why tongue-action is more appropriately referred to as French kissing? May be, just may be, I would be less cynical if I watched more of this cheesy stuff?