I-NonQueer Romance: IN THE FRENCH STYLE (1963)
The straight romance that starts with an I was IN THE FRENCH STYLE (1963), directed by Robert Parrish.
I'll go ahead and call it a pro-feminist movie, even though the lead character, Christina James (Jean Seberg), a young American woman in Paris, ultimately chooses marriage—when she's no longer a young woman. The way she breaks the news to one of her many boyfriends is incredible. In the presence of her fiancé. There's no cockfight. There's no mindgames. She's an equal.
I'd call it a pro-feminist movie even though there isn't a single woman in her life (pun intended).
The entire cast surrounding Jean Seberg is a succession of boyfriends and a father, people switching seamlessly from flawless English to flawless French. They don't make them like this anymore...
Male characters left and right, and yet a woman shines through and exists with or without those men. She lives her own life. She's honest about her feelings. She's deep and sincere in what could've easily been portrayed as Epicurean frivolity. There is no slut-shaming, no moral lesson, and, what I liked most, no dogma. Christina James is her own moral compass. She lives her own life and follows her own instincts. There's no man to save her, and she's not there to save anyone. No one uses her; she uses no one. She respects herself, and that's more than enough.
The script is beautiful (all the praise and honors go to Irwin Shaw). Every sentence is worth quoting; every piece of dialogue is an onion of interpersonal intelligence. But this is what provoked my loudest chuckle, something Christina James says near the end:
"I've been thinking out my life. A girl ought to think out her life once every 23 years."
I also took a picture of an Air France plane that caught my eye because... THE FONT IN THE LOGO HAS NEVER CHANGED. Can you believe this? It's incredible! That minimalism was so avant-garde. It's beautiful. Shoutout to the brand marketing department!
"I'm tired of airports," Christina James says in her final monologue. As for me, i'm tired of packing boxes and changing homes in this city.
Next movies to watch: a biopic that starts with a J, a comedy that starts with a K, and a drama that starts with an L.