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.

WALTER: Would you like to get up from this table and go off with me tonight?

CHRISTINA: Yes.

WALTER: But you won't.

CHRISTINA: No.

WALTER: Why not?

CHRISTINA: Because I don't live for tonight anymore.

WALTER: I don't believe you.

CHRISTINA: Let's talk about something else. Where are you going on your next trip? Kenya? Bonn? Tokyo?

WALTER: Why not?

CHRISTINA: Because I'm tired of people like you.
I'm tired of all you spoiled, hung-over, international darlings.
I'm tired of correspondents and photographers and promising junior statesmen.
I'm tired of all the brilliant young men who are constantly going off to negotiate a treaty or report a revolution or die in a war.
I'm tired of airports.
I'm tired of seeing people off.
I'm tired of not being allowed to cry until the plane gets off the ground.
I'm tired of answering the telephone.
I'm tired of being so damn prompt.
I'm tired of sitting down to dinner next to people I used to love and being polite to their Greeks.
I'm tired of being handed around the group.
I'm tired of being more in love with people than they are with me.
Does that answer your question?

WALTER: More or less.

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.