Sometimes you want a boar shank...other times, a macaron.
If the American romantic comedy is past hope and past help, in France, it's very much alive. There are some pitch-perfect French comedies (I Do, My Best Friend, Heartbreaker) and happily, there's a book on our Winter list that's about to join their ranks. Delicacy by David Foenkinos is being made into a movie as we speak, starring none other than French film goddess Audrey Tautou. Tautou plays Nathalie, a beautiful young widow who is romanced by the unlikeliest of suitors: her shy, eccentric coworker Francois. The book is as lightweight and sweet as the macarons on its cover, and strikes the perfect balance between humor and feeling.
These two treats, both book and film, don't come out for some time but they are well-worth the wait. In the meantime, just google-image macarons. Salut!
Last night I was lucky to attend the premiere of the last Harry Potter movie with one of my closest friends, Jamison.* It was kismet for us, as almost ten years ago we were waiting for the 5th (was it the 5th?) Harry Potter book on the midnight line at Borders. I remember us sprawling out on the floor and reading both erotica and Nicholas Sparks aloud to pass the time. Incidentally, if you've never read a Nicholas Sparks sex scene, you are really missing out on...well, something.
But back to Harry Potter. A member of an early Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows test audience wrote the following on her comment card: "Goodbye childhood." Like many of the books and movies I loved best as a child, Harry Potter is at its heart, an allegory. Good and evil, Harry and Voldemort, battle it out in a cataclysmic storm of magic, both beautifully representing their respective binaries. Good must win out, just as it does in The Lord of the Rings, the original Star Wars trilogy, Narnia etc etc.
When you're a kid, you don't generally have a sense of the grey ethical areas that comprise human choices. The moral landscape looks, by and large, as black and white as an allegory. Maybe there are shifting allegiances, as in the case of Snape, but there's always a choice to be made between one side and the other. As most of us find out, life--real life--is rarely so simple. Human beings have an infinite capacity for both good and evil, however you define or circumscribe those concepts.
So my question is this: as we get older, do we like allegories more or less than we once did? Are they a comfort, or are they merely a reminder of the idealism we've lost on the way to adulthood? Feel free to opine in the comments.
*Names have been changed to protect the embarrassed.
