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Authors: Elaine Sciolino
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effort, too.
Still, Chappey’s analysis was intriguing. I decided to learn more about le regard . I knew in advance I would never learn how to do it properly myself, as I am hopelessly nearsighted, which means that my eyeballs get reduced to the size of peas behind my glasses. But as a journalist, I’m a trained observer. And I discovered that one of the best ways to learn how the French do le regard was to watch French films.
In Les amants , the 1958 film by Louis Malle, Jeanne Moreau plays the character Jeanne, who has an officious husband, a sweet daughter, and a polo-playing lover. She falls in love with Bernard, a young archeologist she meets by chance. It takes only one look. They are in the moonlit garden of her house in the country late one night. He tries to kiss her. She resists. He runs after her. He firmly grabs her shoulders in order to prevent her from moving. Her back is pushed up against a tree, and she has no way to escape. They are now staring at each other passionately. Jeanne smiles with contentment.
“Love can be born in a single glance,” we hear Jeanne say, speaking of herself in the third person. “In an instant, Jeanne felt all shame and restraint fall away. She couldn’t hesitate. There’s no resisting happiness.”
Jeanne and Bernard hold hands and walk in the moonlight. She declares her love; they can’t stop looking at each other.
The Coen brothers mocked le regard in their contribution to a collection of vignettes that became the 2006 film Paris, je t’aime . At the Tuileries Métro stop, an anguished American tourist (played by Steve Buscemi) ignores one of the surreal warnings in his Paris guidebook: “Above all, eye contact should be avoided with the other people standing around.” The tourist cannot resist staring at a pair of quarreling lovers on the other side of the tracks. The girlfriend toys with him, caressing him with her eyes to make her boyfriend jealous; the boyfriend glowers. Suddenly, the girlfriend is sitting next to the tourist. She kisses him passionately. The boyfriend punches him.
In real life a sexually tinged regard may also be used to disarm. On a visit to Strasbourg, Carla Bruni found herself in front of a swarm of photographers calling her name. She decided to give herself to one of them. He was sloppily dressed but no matter. For five minutes she posed, looking only at him, ignoring all the others. He was gobsmacked.
Le regard is not done with an open, wide, American-style grin but mysteriously and deeply, with the eyes. Never with a wink. “French women don’t wink,” one French woman told me. “It disfigures your face.”
Another told me she picked up the habit of winking from a classmate when she was about twelve years old. She worked hard in front of the mirror practicing her wink. Her father, a military intelligence officer, made her quit. “Only whores wink,” he told her.
The word is the second weapon. Verbal sparring is crucial to French seduction, and conversation is often less a means of giving or receiving information than a languorous mutual caress.
The practice was perfected by Marivaux, the eighteenth-century playwright, who devoted more than twenty-five plays to the light and lively art of conversation in flirtation, courtship, and seduction. Marivaudage in contemporary French means “banter” and “wordplay.” When words are used as a tool of sexual seduction, indirection and discretion may work best. The frontal approach can be considered brutal and vulgar. The French seducer should not be transparent.
“How seductive you are,” a roguish Michel Piccoli tells the icily beautiful Catherine Deneuve in the 1967 film Belle de jour .
“Your compliments are too subtle,” she replies sarcastically. By being so direct, he has crossed the line.
If talking is the way the word is expressed, then it’s useful to cultivate the voice. Living in France, I have come to understand that the French speak more softly than
Still, Chappey’s analysis was intriguing. I decided to learn more about le regard . I knew in advance I would never learn how to do it properly myself, as I am hopelessly nearsighted, which means that my eyeballs get reduced to the size of peas behind my glasses. But as a journalist, I’m a trained observer. And I discovered that one of the best ways to learn how the French do le regard was to watch French films.
In Les amants , the 1958 film by Louis Malle, Jeanne Moreau plays the character Jeanne, who has an officious husband, a sweet daughter, and a polo-playing lover. She falls in love with Bernard, a young archeologist she meets by chance. It takes only one look. They are in the moonlit garden of her house in the country late one night. He tries to kiss her. She resists. He runs after her. He firmly grabs her shoulders in order to prevent her from moving. Her back is pushed up against a tree, and she has no way to escape. They are now staring at each other passionately. Jeanne smiles with contentment.
“Love can be born in a single glance,” we hear Jeanne say, speaking of herself in the third person. “In an instant, Jeanne felt all shame and restraint fall away. She couldn’t hesitate. There’s no resisting happiness.”
Jeanne and Bernard hold hands and walk in the moonlight. She declares her love; they can’t stop looking at each other.
The Coen brothers mocked le regard in their contribution to a collection of vignettes that became the 2006 film Paris, je t’aime . At the Tuileries Métro stop, an anguished American tourist (played by Steve Buscemi) ignores one of the surreal warnings in his Paris guidebook: “Above all, eye contact should be avoided with the other people standing around.” The tourist cannot resist staring at a pair of quarreling lovers on the other side of the tracks. The girlfriend toys with him, caressing him with her eyes to make her boyfriend jealous; the boyfriend glowers. Suddenly, the girlfriend is sitting next to the tourist. She kisses him passionately. The boyfriend punches him.
In real life a sexually tinged regard may also be used to disarm. On a visit to Strasbourg, Carla Bruni found herself in front of a swarm of photographers calling her name. She decided to give herself to one of them. He was sloppily dressed but no matter. For five minutes she posed, looking only at him, ignoring all the others. He was gobsmacked.
Le regard is not done with an open, wide, American-style grin but mysteriously and deeply, with the eyes. Never with a wink. “French women don’t wink,” one French woman told me. “It disfigures your face.”
Another told me she picked up the habit of winking from a classmate when she was about twelve years old. She worked hard in front of the mirror practicing her wink. Her father, a military intelligence officer, made her quit. “Only whores wink,” he told her.
The word is the second weapon. Verbal sparring is crucial to French seduction, and conversation is often less a means of giving or receiving information than a languorous mutual caress.
The practice was perfected by Marivaux, the eighteenth-century playwright, who devoted more than twenty-five plays to the light and lively art of conversation in flirtation, courtship, and seduction. Marivaudage in contemporary French means “banter” and “wordplay.” When words are used as a tool of sexual seduction, indirection and discretion may work best. The frontal approach can be considered brutal and vulgar. The French seducer should not be transparent.
“How seductive you are,” a roguish Michel Piccoli tells the icily beautiful Catherine Deneuve in the 1967 film Belle de jour .
“Your compliments are too subtle,” she replies sarcastically. By being so direct, he has crossed the line.
If talking is the way the word is expressed, then it’s useful to cultivate the voice. Living in France, I have come to understand that the French speak more softly than
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