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MY LIFE AS A FRENCH MOVIE
Posted 01.29.10 by annajohnson
OK, so I have this idea for a T-shirt. And it says “LIFE IS NOT A FRENCH MOVIE” on the front. And “WHAT A SHAME” on the back. But secretly and of late my life has actually become a French movie. Because I moved to a neighbourhood that looks like a suburban mutation of “Under the Cherry Moon” meets St.Tropez. Because I keep running into a man on the ferry who looks like Jean Paul Belmondo and because I wear floral dresses and red lipstick everyday on purpose and my son wears stripey t-shirts. Also on purpose. It’s still summer in Sydney and the long lonely Brooklyn winters feel so far away. I moved into an apartment with a very ugly but cute chocolate brown and canary yellow kitchen and every day feels like a holiday. Maybe because my rent is not due for another two weeks and Marcello enjoys baking cakes with me on Sunday mornings. Let me explain Double Bay, Sydney. No one groovy wants to live here because blonde women with small dogs and gold sneakers are not cool. The mums who bring their kids to the local primary school here are thin on the ground because the area is so rich that everyone is cossetted off from birth to a private school. So, in a very weird twist of fate, I get to live in one of Sydney’s poshest areas for a cheap rent because the locals all own their houses and the renters are all living somewhere else more groovy. And so the streets are empty and treelined, like in a French movie. And old men with Italian sunglasses sit at cafe tables, as in a French movie and Marcello and I catch the ferry to preschool everyday and I pull all sorts of French movie moves. Like: letting my dress plow up on purpose in front of the office workers, and wrapping one long Indian skarf around both our necks,….and flirting with the handsome man who catches the 6.15pm. It’s a bit sad. he doesn’t really know he’s in my script. “I’m sorry” he said yesterday, looming above me with his distracting hardened nipples under his olive green silk t-shirt “Do I know you?” BEIN SUR I wanted to declare but replied “Sure, everytime I see you you almost knock me to the ground as you come galloping across the street on the way to the ferry…” And just like a French movie he looked at me as if someone had fudged the subtitles. I didn’t care. the sun was shining. The imaginary soundtrack music (Tindersticks) was blaring in my mind and the wind was catching Cello’s hair. Romance really is a state of mind and right now, before the summers ends, I feel like Godard is directing. Pity he never made a black and white film about a single mother. Maybe I better get writing.
Till next time, KEEPING IT YUMMY.
XXX ANNA
P.S. OK, so this all sounds a bit too simple. I still have rent, and bills, and anxiety about Cello’s sugar consumption. And stress. But I am here to tell all mothers that after a divorce. And after a big move. And after many sleepless numbingly lonely nights. There are good bits. And this, for me, is one of them.
Anne-Marijn Says:
February 1st, 2010 at 3:12 amHi Anna,
This is just what you are about: showing the positive side of things, making something out of life.
Good idea for that shirt! (Although some French movies make us glad we’re not in them…)
Is that you on the photo?
You look very feminine. That also helps to beat the blues.
Keep it yummy and keep writing,
Anne-Marijn