The Mother Tongue
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Mademoiselle (or Madame) De Vries, please have mercy for the abused and defenseless langue Francaise (“Hello, I’m Catherine Deneuve,” by Hilary de Vries, Dec. 27).
“Belle de Jour (Daytime Beauty)” is the correct title of the unsurpassed Luis Bunuel movie. It is a play on words of the literary expression belle de nuit (night-time beauty), meaning “prostitute.” Use du instead of de for the soup du jour you order at your favorite restaurant.
Roger Vadim directed Deneuve in “Le Vice et la Vertu.” Virtue is the English spelling.
Accents are essential in French. They are to vowels what tarragon is to a nice, unctuous bearnaise sauce on your chateaubriand (the steak, not the poet).
Us Frogs, we have this very irritating habit of correcting Francophile Americans every five words, instead of congratulating them for learning our difficult language. This is not what I’m trying to do. The issue is professionalism. I really enjoyed reading the article; it was lively and well-documented. But I’m sure that Calendar has translators, dictionaries, proofreaders, anthologies of French cinema and whatnot at its disposal. Use them!
SAMY AYARI
West Los Angeles
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