French life, Why study French?

Shock News: France Better than Britain!

Leave a comment

The Daily Telegraph, a newspaper not always known for its warm and fuzzy feelings towards our continental neighbours, recently made a shock announcement.

France is better than Britain.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you maybe suspected this already, but to see it confirmed as fact in black and white by the Daily Telegraph must nevertheless come as something of a surprise.

The full article, written by Alex Proud, is here. Below is an extract:

To be fair to us, the French do have a better starting point. They hit the geographic jackpot. Their country comes with everything included. They’ve got Europe’s highest Mountain (get lost, Elbrus, you’re Eurasian at best). They have a second mountain range which is still better than anything we have. They have a third mountain range (the Massif Central) which is also better than anything we have. They have proper sunny beaches in the south, booming surf beaches in the west and Brittany in the north. They have one of Europe’s biggest canyons. In between all these stunning attractions, they have tons of beautiful and varied countryside, some quite like England, but less spoilt.
By comparison, we have a lot of islands, which, while beautiful, are off Scotland where they are too cold and wet to be particularly useful. Our mountains are big hills which lack the requisite altitude to ski on reliably or hold pretty glaciers. We do have a lot of coastline. But honestly, much of this is chilly or badly located. It’s true that Cornwall is great but the French have Brittany, which is like Cornwall, but warmer and with better food.

OK, so France is pretty. You knew that. But there’s not much we can do to change our landscape, climate or population density. However, there are quite a few things the French just do better – and these we could learn from.

Next we have the food. Yeah, yeah, I know that London is probably a more exciting place to eat than Paris these days. And I know that there is good food to be found outside London. I even know that the French quite like McDonald’s. But the fact is, if you pitch up to eat at random in the middle of nowhere in the UK, you’ll probably get average pub grub, quite possibly made in a factory in the Midlands and reheated, and likely pretty expensive. If there is somewhere serving decent food, it’ll be full of people from London congratulating themselves on being there.

In France, by contrast, you can get a good meal anywhere. It may feel a bit retro (there won’t be a horribly Anglicised Thai green curry in sight) but it’ll be honest regional cooking, inexpensive, and come with wine. What’s more, the person on the table next to you might well be a local farmer or a builder.

Aha, you say. But what about the economy? Here in the UK, we’re lucky enough to enjoy an endless stream of right-ish propaganda about how the French economy is dans la toilette. But these claims really don’t really stand up to much scrutiny.

For starters, France’s growth figures for the first quarter of this year were twice as good as ours. It’s true they do have significantly higher unemployment, but they also have extremely high productivity. In fact, as The Economist recently noted, “The French could take Friday off and still produce more than Britons do in a week.” This is not something you hear very often from our chancellor. They also have a rather better balanced economy and a considerably lower Gini Coefficient, the preferred measure of inequality. While we’re at it, they beat us on GDP per capita, earn roughly the same and have a lower cost of living.

So, maybe (and this hurts) those lazy, boozy, holiday taking, socialism-loving Frogs are actually better at making money than we are. But this shouldn’t be such a surprise. The French don’t focus obsessively on their economy. They don’t bend over backwards to please businesses or foreign billionaires. They have a healthy disdain and distrust of the wealthy. And they’re better at making the rich share. Perhaps the French realise that they live in a society first and an economy second – and this actually makes them all richer.

Why study French?

Employability (Part One)

1 Comment

paris_italy_2011_33-1posted by Simon Kemp

The Higher Education Statistics Agency recently released their latest report on what happens next to university graduates . They asked four hundred thousand ex-students, who had finished a degree at a UK university in the 2013-14 academic year, what they were doing six months later. The results, in spreadsheet after spreadsheet of data, are all here, if you’d care to explore them.

So, how does modern languages do? How does it compare with other subjects in terms of the employability of its graduates?

Well, as it turns out, it does pretty well. Six months after graduating, 88% of modern languages graduates were in employment or post-graduate education. That’s above the average for all subjects, and better than physics, chemistry, business studies, social studies, history and philosophy (all at 87%), or media studies, agricultural studies and computer science (all at 86%). It equals maths, biological sciences, design and engineering, and is bettered only by medical science, architecture, law and education. Given that the last two of those are also available to modern languages graduates via one-year teacher-training or law-conversion courses, and very popular destinations among our students, it seems fair to say that there’s hardly a better passport to a career than a modern languages degree. (Except maybe architecture or medicine, I guess, but we can’t all spend our working life doodling skyscrapers and getting coughed at by people with the flu. If that’s what you fancy, then please go ahead with the medicine and/or architecture. Everyone else, though, ought to think seriously about a modern languages degree.)

Looking deeper into the data, it’s no surprise to see that modern languages graduates top the charts for people getting their first job abroad, with 6% of the cohort working overseas. The subject also has one of the highest percentages of people going on to further study, with 19% of students studying for a postgraduate qualification, and a further 7% combining postgraduate study with work. Modern languages are useful in so many fields, that it’s common for students to follow up their degree with a one-year masters course in business, law, international relations or some other specialist area into which they will take their language skills.

This is, incidentally, why modern languages often get overlooked when newspapers publish ‘top ten’ lists of employable degree subjects: since the criterion  is to be in full-time work six months after graduation, the large number of modern languages graduates doing masters courses messes up our stats. Another chart on the HESA site looks at current employment levels for people who finished their degree in the previous year, 2012-2013. There, modern languages is riding high, with 92.2% of graduates from full-time degrees in employment, again beating physics, chemistry, maths, engineering, computer science (still at a startlingly low 86.5%), history and business studies. Once again, only medicine-related subjects, law and teaching have higher employment rates than modern languages.

 

So those are the statistics; what about the reality? Next Wednesday I’ll tell you about some of the destinations my own modern languages students have gone on to after their degree. (And, by the way, if there are former Oxford modern languages students reading this who’d like to share their own stories of life after university, do send them to me at simon.kemp@some.ox.ac.uk, and I’ll include them in a later post.)

Film

Jessica’s DANS LA MAISON

Leave a comment

download

Our annual competition to rewrite the endings of French films in creative and unusual ways allows all kinds of entries. You can do it in English or in French, as a script or a story, or even as a youtube video. We’re always hugely impressed by the amount of talent and hard work that goes into these entries, and so, to celebrate that, here’s one of this year’s winning entries from the Years 12-13 category. It’s a new ending for Francois Ozon’s film, Dans la maison, written by Jessica Harlap Binks, who has taken the ambitious route of producing a fully-fledged shooting script for a new ending, written entirely in French. Here’s the whole thing:

Dans La Maison: An Alternative Ending

By

Jessica Harlap Binks

EXT. JOUR- DERRIÈRE DE LA MAISON

CLAUDE: Je suis venu vous chercher Esther.

Esther regarde Claude pour voir si ce qu’il dit est vrai. Elle le serre dans ses bras. Ils ne bougent pas pour un moment.

CLAUDE: Allons-y, vite.

ESTHER: Où irons nous?

CLAUDE: N’importe où. Je veux être avec vous, et seulement vous. Je vous aime.

ESTHER: Je t’aime aussi. Tu me manquais.

Ils s’embrassent, puis ils partent en courant, se tenant par la main.

INT. SOIR- LE SALON DE GERMAIN

Germain s’assied sur le canapé, un stylo et du papier dans les mains. Il se parle partiellement lui-même, et partiellement à Jeanne, qui prépare le dîner.

GERMAIN: Peut-être option D. Mais non, il n’y a aucune option qui marche bien de celles-ci. J’ai besoin d’une nouvelle option.

JEANNE: Arrête! Tu t’écoutes? C’est ridicule!

Elle range la table en colère. Germain s’assied à la table.

GERMAIN: Tu ne me comprends pas, Jeanne. Cette histoire a tant de potentiel.

Jeanne s’assied, désespérée.

JEANNE: Ce n’est pas ton histoire.

GERMAIN: Je sais, mais il veut que je la finisse.

LE PAPIER VIERGE EST VU SUR LE CANAPÉ.

INT. NUIT- LA CHAMBRE DE GERMAIN

Germain ne peut pas dormir. Il se lève, agité, et s’habille. Il prend ses clés, son manteau et son sac, dans lequel il place le papier vierge. Il sort de l’appartement, silencieusement.

INT. NUIT- LE COULOIR DE L’APPARTEMENT DE GERMAIN Germain trouve son portable et téléphone à Anouk.

GERMAIN: Anouk?

PAUSE.

Oui, c’est moi.

PAUSE.

Je sais, je sais. Mais Anouk?

PAUSE.

J’ai besoin de l’adresse d’une élève. PAUSE.

Je t’en prie. C’est la seule façon dont je peux… dont je peux l’aider.

PAUSE.

Oui. Rapha Artole.

PAUSE.

Germain écrit une adresse sur sa main, avec le sac sous le bras, et le portable entre l’oreille et l’épaule. Non, je ne le dirai à personne.

PAUSE.

Merci, Anouk. Dor bien, toi.

Germain finit le coup de téléphone.

 

INT. NUIT- LA CHAMBRE DE RAPHA

Claude est au lit. Le bruit de quelqu’un en bas et celui de la télé forte le réveille. Claude se lève, et commence à écrire au bureau avec une ferveur frustrée.

EXT. NUIT- DANS LA RUE

Germain cherche la maison avec l’adresse sur la main, et il découvre que c’est celle d’une petite maison miteuse. Il la vérifie, confus. Il supposait qu’il trouverait la maison de l’histoire. Il sonne, et attend. C’est Rapha Jr. qui ouvre la porte.

RAPHA: (trop épuisé pour être très surpris) Monsieur?

GERMAIN:

Est-ce que Claude est là?

RAPHA:

Claude? Qui est Claude?

GERMAIN: Hein? Claude, ton ami!

RAPHA: Dans nôtre classe?

GERMAIN: Oui…

RAPHA: Ah, non, je ne le connais pas très bien. Désolé.

GERMAIN: (sans le pouvoir de s’arrêter) Mais il vient ici presque tous les jours!

RAPHA: (nonchalant) Quoi? Je ne comprends pas. J’ai dit, je ne connais pas bien Claude.

GERMAIN: (confus et soudain anxieux) Merde! C’est vrai?

RAPHA: Mais oui! Il ne passe pas beaucoup de temps avec les autres élèves. Les seules fois que je l’ai vu avec quelqu’un, il était avec vous… a part ça, Il est toujours en train d’écrire.

Germain réalise qu’il y a quelque chose qui cloche. Il décide de le vérifier.

GERMAIN: Tes parents, comment s’appellent-ils?

Rapha voit que c’est un sujet sérieux, donc il ne questionne pas Germain. Il arrête d’essayer de comprendre ce qui se passe.

RAPHA: Pierre et Suzanne. Pourquoi?

GERMAIN: Rapha, as-tu une liste avec les adresses de tous les élèves dans la classe?

RAPHA: Peut-être, mais pourquoi?

GERMAIN: (qui ne veut pas expliquer) C’est une urgence. Trouve-la, vite!

RAPHA: Oui monsieur!

Il court à l’intérieur.

(en croyant que son rôle est très important) Je le ferai tout de suite!

Germain est seul, est il se frotte le visage avec les mains, confus et inquiet. Rapha retourne.

RAPHA: (fier) Voilà!

Germain saisit la liste, et la lit. Il n’écoute pas Rapha, parce qu’il cherche l’adresse de Claude. Je ne pouvais pas la trouver parce qu’il y avait un grand tas de papiers dans le bureau, donc j’ai passé longtemps à la chercher, avant de réaliser qu’elle était dans ma chambre. Désolé. Ça c’est tout, monsieur?

Germain trouve l’adresse et lève les yeux.

GERMAIN: (préoccupé) Oui. Merci, Rapha. Je suis désolé de ce qui s’est passé avec ton devoir. J’avais tort.

RAPHA: (acceptant les excuses avec un sourire) Bonsoir, Monsieur.

Rapha ferme la porte et Germain cour dans la rue, dans la direction de la maison de Claude.

INT. NUIT- LA CHAMBRE DE RAPHA

On entend la voix d’un homme qui crie en bas. Claude pleure pendant il écrit, et il s’essuie les yeux . Il écrit ’Option E’ en haut de la page.

EXT. NUIT- DANS LA RUE

Germain se parle à lui-même en courant. Il cherche la maison de Claude, à bout de souffle.

GERMAIN: Qu’est-ce qui se passe? Qu’est-ce qui se passe? Où est la maison? Pourquoi Claude a-t-il menti? Ce n’est pas bien. Pas bien du tout.

Il voit la rue dans laquelle la maison est située (selon la liste), et il y tourne.

MONTAGE DE SÉQUENCES AVEC COMMENTAIRE (Le rythme de cette scène augmente d’un bout à l’autre.)

CLAUDE CONTINUE À ÉCRIRE, VRAIMENT BOULEVERSÉ.

COMMENTAIRE CLAUDE: Option E. L’histoire est vrai. Il y avait un garçon dans une maison.

ON VOIT CLAUDE DANS ’LA MAISON’, OÙ IL MANGE DU PIZZA SUR LE CANAPÉ À LA PLACE DE RAPHA. ESTHER LUI FROTTE LES ÉPAULES DERRIÈRE LUI.

GERMAIN COURT DANS LA RUE.

Sa mère est tombée enceinte. Elle est partie.

ESTHER ET RAPHA SENIOR SE DISPUTENT PENDANT QU’ELLE FAIT UNE VALISE.

GERMAIN S’ARRETE POUR VERIFIER LE NUMÉRO DE LA MAISON. LE PAPIER DIT ’15’, ET IL EST EN FACE DE LA MAISON 1. Son mari est tombé malade. Il boit toutes les nuits.

LE PASSAGE DU TEMPS À TRAVERS LE MOIS MONTRE RAPHA SENIOR QUI DEVIENT DE PLUS EN PLUS FÂCHÉ ET COMMENCE À BOIRE AU SALON PENDANT QUE CLAUDE LE REGARDE.

GERMAIN SE DEPÊCHE APRÈS LA MAISON 2.

Le garçon tombe amoureux de son camarade de classe.

CLAUDE REGARDE RAPHA, QUI JOUE AU BASKET AVEC SES AMIS À L’ÉCOLE.

Il ne peut pas s’empêcher de penser constamment à lui.

LE PLAN DE RAPHA QUI S’EMBRASSE CLAUDE, SUIVI PAR L’IMAGE DE CLAUDE QUI A UN CAUCHEMAR AU LIT, COMME RAPHA AVAIT EU PLUS TÔT.

GERMAIN COURT APRES LES MAISONS 3, 4, 5.

Quand son prof lui donne le devoir d’écrire, il décide d’écrire une histoire.

UN PLAN DE GERMAIN, QUI ÉCRIT LE DEVOIR AU TABLEAU. L’histoire de sa vie. Mais il ne veut pas que ce soit son histoire.

CLAUDE S’ASSIED SUR LE BANC, OÙ IL COMMENCE À ÉCRIRE. Donc, elle devient l’histoire de son camarade de classe, la seule personne dans sa tête qu’il puisse supporter.

UNE IMAGE DE CLAUDE DANS ’LA MAISON’ AVEC RAPHA SUPÉRIEUR ET ESTHER DEVIENT UNE IMAGE DE RAPHA AVEC EUX.

GERMAIN CONTINUE APRÈS LES MAISONS 7, 8.

La maison est démolie. Ce n’est plus une famille normale. Il continue à écrire pendant des semaines- des mois.

UN MONTAGE DE PLUSIEURS JOURS, OÙ CLAUDE EST TOUJOURS EN TRAIN D’ÉCRIRE AU BUREAU DE SA CHAMBRE, AFFECTÉ.

GERMAIN COURT PLUS RAPIDEMENT APRÈS LES MAISONS 1O, 11, 12.

Il pense que peut-être, son prof pourra l’aider. Il peut le sauver de cette vie.

LA SÉQUENCE OÙ CLAUDE DONNE SON PREMIER DEVOIR À GERMAIN

EST RÉPÉTÉE, MAIS DU POINT DE VUE DE CLAUDE, POUR QU’ON PUISSE VOIR LE DÉSESPOIR DE CLAUDE, QUI VEUT L’AIDE DE SON PROF.

LA MAISON 13.

Mais non, le prof veut seulement l’histoire, pas la vérité.

LA SÉQUENCE OÙ CLAUDE DONNE LES QUATRES OPTIONS À GERMAIN EST RÉPÉTÉ, MAIS DU POINT DE VUE DE CLAUDE. APRÈS QUE GERMAIN EST PARTI, CLAUDE CONTINUE DE SE BATTRE, EN SE COGNANT LA TÊTE CONTRE LES MURS. IL SAIGNE ET PLEURE.

LA MAISON 14.

Esther ne se retourne pas.

LA SÉQUENCE DE CLAUDE ET ESTHER OÙ ILS S’ÉVADENT EST INVERSÉE, ALORS CLAUDE DEMEURE SEUL.

Elle ne trouve pas Claude, et ils ne s’évadent pas ensemble.

EXT. NUIT- DANS LA RUE

Germain arrive à la maison 15, haletant, et voit par la fenêtre que Claude s’est pendu. Il est dans la même salle de bain et dans la même position que Rapha était dans la scène plus tôt, ce qui suggère que quand il l’a écrite dans l’histoire, c’était un appel à l’aide.

COMMENTAIRE CLAUDE: Fin.

French language

Bons mots: la limousine et la baïonnette

Leave a comment

The Limousin is a region of France to the south-west of Paris around the city of Limoges. Bayonne is a town on the Atlantic coast near the Spanish border, in the heart of the Basque country.

The Limousin is a mostly rural area, famed in France for its distinctive red-brown limousin beef cattle. It doesn’t have a lot of limousines, and yet the region is without doubt the origin of the word.

Similarly, the place-name of Bayonne is the origin of the word bayonet (la baïonnette in French).

So how did limousines and bayonets come to get their names?

The link between Bayonne and bayonets is the more straightforward one. Rural France in the seventeenth century was prone to sporadic conflicts between different groups. During one such, the peasants of Bayonne found themselves short of gunpowder and bullets. As an alternative, they lashed their hunting knives to the end of their muskets to make improvised spears, and the bayonet was born. (They may not actually have been the first people ever to do so, but the association with Bayonne has stuck.)

Limousin and the limo is a more mysterious connection. No one actually knows for sure how the region came to give its name to the stretched cars beloved of film stars and hen nights. The first vehicles to be known by the name were luxury cars in the 1900s which had an enclosed compartment for the passengers behind a driver’s seat with roof and windscreen, but otherwise open.

One suggestion is that shepherds of the limousin region wore a distinctive hooded cloak. Carriages with separate cover for driver and passengers became known as ‘limousin’ carriages by association, and when the similarly structured motor vehicle appeared, the name was carried across. Do make up your own etymology for the term, though, if you can think of something more plausible.

Other French words derived from place names include le corbillard (hearse), which originally referred to a water-bus shuttling between Paris and the suburb of Corbeil, and la dinde (turkey), which is a contraction of la poule des Indes (chicken from the West Indies), showing that the French had a better grasp of where turkeys come from than the English did.

Lastly, the flower meadow saffron is le colchique in French, which is derived from Colchis, the home of the tragic heroine Medea in Greek myth. Medea’s story involves multiple poisonings, and in French the poisonous flowers of the meadow saffron are associated with her crimes. Les colchiques, and their poison, feature in the most famous poem by Guillaume Apollinaire, which gives me all the reason I need to reprint it here by way of conclusion:

 

Les Colchiques

Le pré est vénéneux mais joli en automne
Les vaches y paissant
Lentement s’empoisonnent
Le colchique couleur de cerne et de lilas
Y fleurit tes yeux sont comme cette fleur-la
Violatres comme leur cerne et comme cet automne
Et ma vie pour tes yeux lentement s’empoisonne

Les enfants de l’école viennent avec fracas
Vêtus de hoquetons et jouant de l’harmonica
Ils cueillent les colchiques qui sont comme des mères
Filles de leurs filles et sont couleur de tes paupières
Qui battent comme les fleurs battent au vent dément

Le gardien du troupeau chante tout doucement
Tandis que lentes et meuglant les vaches abandonnent
Pour toujours ce grand pré mal fleuri par l’automne

Meadow Saffron

 The meadow is poisonous but pretty in the autumn / The cows that graze there / Are slowly poisoned / Meadow-saffron the colour of lilac and of dark shadows around the eyes / Grows there your eyes are like those flowers / Mauve as their shadows and mauve as this autumn / And for your eyes’ sake my life is slowly poisoned

 Children from school come with their commotion / Dressed in smocks and playing the mouth-organ / Picking autumn crocuses which are like their mothers / Daughters of their daughters and the colour of your eyelids / Which flutter like flowers in the mad breeze blown

 The cowherd sings softly to himself all alone / While slow moving lowing the cows leave behind them / Forever this great meadow ill flowered by autumn

French literature

Literary Treasures Online

Leave a comment

posted by Jessica Allen

Digital Humanities are certainly a very modern invention. They are a way of creating a copy or a version of a text, literary or otherwise, and putting this online so that it is available to a wider audience than it would be if only the physical, printed format were available. Whilst looking at a screen is no substitute for having the actual material object in front of you, it’s certainly good to be able to continue reading or researching whilst you are away from university, or to look at rare books without having to journey deep into some stacks. Browsing is also very easy and often free so readers tend to discover a few unexpected treasures along the way.
The web is home to an ever increasing number of Digital Humanities projects, so it can sometimes be difficult to know where to start. As part of my year abroad I was lucky enough to intern on a Digital Humanities project in Tours, France. The Bibliothèques Virtuelles Humanistes, often known simply as the BVH, is dedicated to 16th Century French literature and provides Renaissance fans with a treasure trove of manuscripts and first edition printed books in pdf format, as well as searchable transcripts and image databases. The online database is divided into several sections, so I’m going to write about my favourite bits here:

MONLOE (MONntaigne à L’Œuvre)

monleo rousseau annotated version

Michel de Montaigne was a 16th Century French thinker whose three volumes of essais provide the basis for what we consider to be an essay today. In writing his essais, one of his main aims was to offer a portrait of a self which was constantly changing and developing. The online editions are particularly magical because the pdfs allow us to see his marginalia and additions (or his allongeails, as he called them) in their original state, so therefore the development of this self, as well as those added by his editor and fille d’alliance (adopted daughter) Marie de Gournay. The MONLOE corpus also contains books owned by Montaigne himself and sources which inspired the Essais, so it is a must for any Montaigne fan. You can access this part of the library here: http://www.bvh.univ-tours.fr/Montaigne.asp

ReNOM Renaissance

renom image

This project focuses on the work of Renaissance writer François Rabelais, most famous for the ground-breaking collection La Vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel, and of the poet Ronsard, the most prominent member of the Pléiade. Both writers’ texts are peppered with place names, so ReNOM provides surfers with an interactive map which allows them to browse extracts from the books whilst matching them to their real location. This is a brilliant way to make the most of a sightseeing trip and to really make literature come alive. Looking at the map shows just how geographically wide-ranging these texts are: http://renom.univ-tours.fr/fr/cartographie

There’s no better way to discover the Renaissance than by looking at authentic materials, so definitely check out the BVH. Don’t forget that there are online resources to suit all tastes, so if the Renaissance isn’t your cup of tea, perhaps try looking at Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr/), which is run by the National Library of France in Paris and covers all periods of literature. Your next literary adventures are just a few clicks away…

Applying to study modern languages, Why study French?

But what’s it really like? Modern Languages and Linguistics

Leave a comment

As well as studying a modern language on its own or with another language offered by the faculty here, you have the option to take a degree in one of the six ‘joint schools’ combining modern languages with another humanities subject. If you’re interested in how languages work, how they evolve over time, how we acquire them as children and what happens in our brains as we speak and listen, then you ought to seriously consider a degree combining modern languages and linguistics. Here’s the short film made by Oxford University to introduce the subject:

Events and Competitions, Film

French Film Essay Competition 2015

Leave a comment

 

bienvenue chez les ch'tis_2(1)

posted by Will McKenzie and Kate Rees

A feast of narrative imagination and directorial invention!The University of Oxford’s fourth French film essay competition was once more opened up to younger students (from year 7 onwards) and offered entrants the chance to write, direct and submit their own mini-film. An amazing total of 178 entries were received, from almost 50 schools.

The judges were deeply impressed by the range and richness of responses to the four set films: Le Petit Nicolas and Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (years 7-11) and Dans la maison and De Rouille et d’os (years 12-13). Entrants re-wrote the closing chapter, picking up narrative threads left hanging by each film’s ambiguous ending. So rich were the responses that, in addition to the winner and runner-up in each category, a selection of further entries were offered special and higher commendations. The winners in each age group were Joe Beadle (Years 7-11) and Jessica Binks (Years 12-13). The winners in the new ‘Film’ category were Class 7H of Bartholomew School. Further details are available at:

http://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/film_comp_2015_results .

Below are brief reports from the judges about the entries for each film.

Le Petit Nicolas

Rewritings (and filmed versions) of the end of Petit Nicolas offered a rich tonal and emotional range, from the gentle and tender – where the united family lives happily ever after – to the sudden and shocking – where the jealous Nicolas takes sibling rivalry to its murderous limit. The strongest entries gave emotional depth and richness to each of the wide cast of characters, including Nicolas’s friends and family, while retaining the rapid, quick-witted patter of the original. The judges were impressed throughout by the close attention entrants gave to all these aspects of the film, and by the sheer energy and enthusiasm invested in all the entries.

Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis

There was a pleasingly large number of responses to this very successful French movie. The vanished wife gave entrants scope to take the film in all kinds of unexpected directions; an opportunity they eagerly seized. Some movingly melancholic, even tragic, entries impressed the judges enormously in their emotional maturity. Others retained the sweetly joyous tone of the original. Scottish entries often made wittily knowing allusions to the “North” of the Ch’tis as wet, cold but ultimately welcoming. While entrants’ level of French was not taken into account when deciding the winners, the judges often noted in passing an encouragingly good grasp of the language.

 Dans la maison

Our older entrants responded very well to this film, which deals expressly with the problem of writing the ending of a story. There were twists and turns as inventive as those of the film itself, and some sensitive responses to the original film’s cold, tense tone and analysis of status anxiety, snobbism and sexual jealousy. There were some gripping retellings in English and in French, strengthened by subtle, incisive description, good narrative pacing and intelligent plotting, where just enough information was released at just the right time to keep the reader guessing.
De rouille et d’os

While relatively few entrants wrote on this film, the entries we did receive were extremely accomplished. Entries here were characterized by their tendency to formal experimentation: there were more rewritings in verse for this film than the others, in English and in French. The judges were impressed especially by entrants’ ability to express themselves well given the constraints of versification, often awarding Special Commendations in recognition of this.

Another competition is planned for next year. We hope you’ll consider entering.

French life, Year Abroad

Bidules, machins and trucs from a year abroad: Montmartre

Leave a comment

posted by Madeleine Chalmers

Montmartre is a legendary part of Paris – a maze of twisting cobbled streets, trees, squares, that leaves you breathless, and not just from the steep climb.

Maddymontmartre

Tucked away discreetly in a side street behind the Sacré-Coeur, the Musée de Montmartre keeps the memory of the area’s heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries alive. Set in beautiful gardens overlooking the Montmartre vineyards, the museum’s collections are displayed in the house of artist Suzanne Valadon and her son Maurice Utrillo, a building which played host to the most dynamic and innovative artists, painters, and composers of the day. A zinc-topped bar counter, a battered piano with yellowed keys, photographs, paintings, and sketches all conjure up a time when Montmartre was the centre of an extraordinary creative ferment, and a lodestone for artists from across Europe, who would arrive with no money and no French, confident of a generous Montmartrean welcome, with kindness and credit freely given.

Maddyatelier

Alongside the Moulin Rouge, two iconic cabarets loom large in the museum’s collections: the Lapin Agile and the Chat Noir. Lithe, mischievous, and living by their wits, the nimble rabbit and black cat which form the Montmartre menagerie perfectly encapsulate the spirit of the area. Opened in 1855, the Lapin Agile still offers a nightly dinner and cabaret show 160 years later, although the atmosphere is somewhat different. In the late 19th century, you would step into a spicy fug of tobacco smoke and sweat, the aniseed burn of absinthe hitting the back of your throat. Ears ringing with the plaintive wheeze and rasp of an accordion, and the sound of bawdy, full-throated laughter, you would take a seat at one of the sticky tables, scored with the initials of your predecessors. You never knew who you’d be rubbing shoulders with: wealthy Parisians slumming it for a night, artists’ models, dancers, political radicals, ladies of the night, local eccentrics of every stripe, penniless poets with inkstained fingers or hungry artists still spattered with paint, come from unheated attics and studios to warm themselves with drink and friendship, and to listen to the chansons réalistes of poets such as Aristide Bruant. As their name suggests, these were songs which told the truth about Paris and the seamy underbelly of its nightlife, in a distinctive slang. They were tales of poverty, prostitution, violence, heartbreak, hopeless love, but also bawdy, innuendo-laden or just downright filthy sing-a-longs. They’re emblematic of gouaille – a uniquely Parisian trait, a blend of bolshy straight-talking, cheek, and bravado, with an underlying hint of vulnerability. It’s tempting to sanitize or romanticize the sordid reality of life in Montmartre, but these songs express the extremes of existence there – all human emotions and situations, from joy to misery, expressed with equal intensity.

Montmartre has retained its strong sense of identity: its inhabitants are still defiant outsiders and unrepentant eccentrics, helping each other out and fighting to preserve their traditions. Looking down from the gardens of the museum and imagining summer evenings heavy with the smell of ripening grapes and raucous with the din of the Lapin Agile, it’s easy to fool yourself into hearing the clack and swoosh of the windmills which used to dot the Montmartre hillside – and feeling the breeze of anarchy.

MAddypark

And if you’re interested…

… here’s a flavour of Montmartre’s cultural output during its heyday.

Art

With their exuberant colours, effervescent energy, and startling shapes, these are definitely worth a look:

Poetry

A larger than life figure, Guillaume Apollinaire was an experimental poet and the father of Surrealism. In his collections Alcools (1913) and Calligrammes (1918), he uses words which are simple individually, but puts them together in surprising combinations. He plays with the layout of his poems on the page to form verbal flowers or fireworks.

A particular favourite of mine is Le Pont Mirabeau (here in the original French, with English translations, and musical French versions).

Music

  • ‘Milord’ – In this rambunctious number, Edith Piaf, the ‘Sparrow of Montmartre’, encourages a broken-hearted lover to drink and dance away his sorrows:

 

 

  • ‘Rose Blanche (Rue St Vincent)’ – an iconic poet from the Lapin Agile, Aristide Bruant here sets his pen to tell of a woman’s tragic end at the hands of her gangster lover, on the Rue St Vincent in Montmartre (here in a rendition by variety star Yves Montand)


Films

  • Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001)
    • A modern take on the area, but which has an unmistakeably quirky Montmartrean charm. The director Jean-Pierre Jeunet lives in Montmartre and is a familiar face in its various restaurants and bars.

The Musée de Montmartre can be found at: 12 rue Cortot, 75018 Paris

 

Madeleine Chalmers

I’m a 3rd year French student at St John’s, currently on an Erasmus study exchange at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. I have been known to give the odd rendition of a chanson réaliste on my accordion.

French life, Student life, Why study French?

Bidules, machins, and trucs from a year abroad: why I love my degree

Leave a comment

eiffel

posted by Madeleine Chalmers

I’ve often been asked why I chose to do a degree in French. My answer is, because it constantly surprises me. The novels, poems, and plays I read for my course at Oxford make me laugh, cry, and think. They might puzzle me occasionally, and always challenge me, but they never leave me indifferent.

Literature, which we read in the original French, forms the backbone of the French course at Oxford. This might sound absolutely terrifying, and not very appealing. Reading in French is a long hard slog, but if you stick with it, it will reward you in ways you couldn’t imagine. I read my first French novels at school with a dictionary balanced on my knees, impatiently deciphering every other word. It was tiring, frustrating, and extremely slow, but absolutely addictive. Reading in English, my eye would skip easily across the page. In French, it felt like I was having to fight for every word, and so, strangely, each word really seemed to matter.

I’ll always remember the rush of joy and pride I felt when I finished my first French book without a dictionary. All of a sudden, I felt as though I had gained access to a whole passionate countryful of new stories, feelings, and ideas – a country I no longer wanted to leave. Reading is an intensely personal experience. Your mind and your feelings come into contact with the mind and feelings of an author who may have lived and died centuries before you were born. He or she offers you his or her vulnerabilities, sense of humour, and ideas about the world – and they collide with yours. The more you read in French, the more fluent you become and the easier it gets, but I promise that you’ll never lose that original thrill of recognition, when, across time and language, an author’s message comes through loud and clear, and it feels as though they were speaking only for you.

A French degree is the experience of other voices and other perspectives. As such, it’s incredibly varied. ‘French literature’ at Oxford encompasses everything written in French – from the earliest Medieval writings to books published last year, from mainland France to French-speaking countries across the world. Options in film, philosophy, and art allow you to get to grips with French culture through approaches which you may not have studied before, while translation and linguistics will make you see language in a whole new light.

One of the distinctive features of a language degree is the year abroad (the 3rd year of the 4 year course). For me, it’s felt like a chance to bring everything together: the French language and culture I’ve studied at Oxford, and French language and culture as they are spoken and lived in France today. It’s the year when a country that has seemed foreign really becomes home.

I’ve always been fascinated by France at the turn of the twentieth century – a period when certain districts of Paris became hubs for innovation by bold new artists, writers, and all-round eccentrics. My year abroad has given me the chance to see exhibitions and museums which celebrate these revolutionaries, and I’ve been able to visit their old haunts and homes. These are moments when the literature, music, art, and atmosphere of a whole time and place slide into focus – and they make all those hours flicking through dictionaries worth the effort. Over the next few months of my year abroad, I’ll try to pinpoint some of those moments – the reasons why I love my degree. First stop (in next week’s post): Montmartre!

Madeleine Chalmers – I’m a 3rd year French student at St John’s, currently on an Erasmus study exchange at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

French language

Love in a foreign language

1 Comment

 

posted by Simon Kemp

The Guardian had a helpful guide recently on what to do if you find yourself falling in love with someone who speaks a different language. The original article is here, but I thought I would share some of it with you, in case you should ever find yourself in that situation:

Dating can be confusing enough in your mother tongue, let alone when your date speaks a foreign language. From dealing with embarrassing mistakes to surviving arguments, Erica Buist shares some tips on how to get by.

Are you dating someone in a foreign language? It can be an amazing language and cultural exchange, but it can also be tricky. Whether you’re celebrating Día de San Valentín, Saint Valentin or Den’ sviatogo Valentina, here are a few tips on how to maintain a relationship without the comfort of your mother tongue.

The first date: don’t try to escape the language barrier

Writer Gary Brooks arrived in Siberia as a linguistic “full-grade ignoramus” and met Masha in a cafe. “She overheard me receiving a Russian lesson over some awful Baltika beer. We did the whole ‘You are Britain?’ horror, with my teacher interpreting for me. Lord of the Rings had just been released, and after we established I had never seen the film we arranged to meet and watch it together (in Russian), and so a first date was born.”

 A film seems like a great idea for a date when you can’t say much to each other, but Gary points out you have to talk about the film afterwards, and suggests you instead use the language gap as material for a date. “Meet up for a coffee date and give a mutual language lesson,” he says. “Go for a long romantic walk, pointing out trees, ducks and strange men in anoraks and tell each other the name in your own languages. It’s relaxing and fun.”

 

When words fail, body language and charades will be your friends

 Will Henderson dated Marianne from Montpellier for three years. When he arrived in France on his Erasmus year, he had only a GSCE in French and a few catch-up lessons: “My level of French was not great. I had some formulaic phrases, such as ‘My name is William’ and ‘Where is the cathedral?’”

Will and Marianne met at the student bar. “It was a good way to get together – because the music is too loud to hear anyway, so you use other ways to flirt, like body language, buying her a drink, or making sure you’re going out for a cigarette at the same time.”

They were together for four months before Will had to resort to charades. All he wanted to do was put up some shelves, but he didn’t know the French words for drill, tools or hole. “I was completely without context. I was pointing at the wall saying, ‘I need a … it’s the thing you use to make a … a bit of not-wall.’ She looked confused; I’d resorted to charades for random nouns before, but this was an entire performance. I pointed my finger like a gun and made drill sounds, at which point she understood and taught me all the words I hadn’t known.”

Treasure the inevitable cultural clashes

Gary says that rather than language barriers which could be “easily overcome with gestures, dictionaries and hurried phone calls to friends”, he and Masha found out more about each other and their backgrounds, by often embarrassing and always revealing cultural differences. “Our third date was at a restaurant and I was puzzled by her insisting on eating every course with a spoon – apparently a knife and fork was ‘posh’ and unnecessary. That memory sticks with me a lot, if only because eating game with a spoon is very difficult.”

Etiquette in other situations were even more baffling. “Manners and interaction, both socially and especially in the bedroom, were – amazingly – determined by the content of classic Russian novels,” says Gary. “If it wasn’t in Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, one simply didn’t do it. If it was rude in Chekhov it was rude in life and if Gogol said something was a good idea then you ought to do it.”

Cultural clashes can be awkward and even embarrassing – but treasure them. They’re not just great for getting to know each other: with every faux pas you get to know your partner’s culture a little better.

Arguments: prepare yourself for an uneven playing field

It can take ages to shake your susceptibility to misunderstandings when you communicate in a second language. “Marianne and I would have blazing rows,” Will recalls, “before realising I’d misheard or misunderstood something.” There are words and phrases that appear to have a simple, direct translation, but the meanings can change in ways dictionaries don’t flag up. You can’t be too precious about your point, advises Will, because you will have complete breakdowns in communication.

Your brain may never work as fast in your second language – but that shouldn’t doom you to lose every argument. Lilia Esperón Delaney from Mexico speaks only English with her Canadian husband, Dan, and finds making arguments the most frustrating part of being in a relationship in a foreign language, even after 14 years together. “You always end up sounding like the more stupid person in the fight – because you have an accent, because you can’t make a point as well, because the perfect word in Spanish has no English equivalent, so you’re definitely at a disadvantage. It can be quite frustrating.”

Embrace embarrassment, it’s good for your vocabulary

Embarrassing stories are useful for remembering words. The first time Gary made Masha laugh was a slapstick moment of slipping on ice and falling over, Norman-Wisdom style. “Instead of warm sympathy I got giggles and a breathy ‘Eto skol’zko, eto skol’zko!’ (It’s slippy, it’s slippy!). In the intervening years I’ve worked all over the place and my Russian has decayed, but I never ever forgot skol’zko.”

“Prepare to be embarrassed on a very regular basis,” says Kate McDermott, reflecting on her time dating a Frenchman. It’s true for all language-learning that you’re likely at some point to mispronounce words and be occasionally unintelligible, but you’re at your most vulnerable in terms of your self-confidence when you’re in the company someone you fancy. The solution? “Get over yourself, basically!” says Kate. And as someone who was once almost tricked by a friend into mixing up the terms for “back of the neck” and “a***hole” during a romantic moment, she should know.

A blog for students and teachers of Years 11 to 13, and anyone else with an interest in Modern Foreign Languages and Cultures, written by the staff and students of Oxford University. Updated every Wednesday!