Love, Parisian Style

The French have always considered themselves masters in the art and science of seduction. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, an accomplished intriguer and Napoleon’s foreign minister, used to say that in matters of amour, beauty conferred only a two-week advantage. The rest was skill and persistence.

But not even the French carry these talents deeply encoded in their DNA. One adult in three in this country, after all, lives alone. Jean-Yves Blanvillain, a TV antenna salesman and installer, is one of them, so he has paid $59 to learn how to become a more effective seducer.

It’s Saturday afternoon, and the 26-year-old bachelor from the cathedral city of Chartres and a dozen other lonely hearts are in a classroom near the Paris Opera, eager to learn the techniques of attracting the opposite sex. There is a stylishly dressed 51-year-old Parisian ditched by her on-again, off-again partner of 13 years. There is a computer whiz in his mid-50s who doesn’t understand why his professional success can’t be downloaded to his love life. There is a psychiatric nurse, wondering how he can meet Mademoiselle Right.

Over 5 1/2 hours, the seminar given by the Paris-based School of Seduction, an establishment that claims to be the pioneer in its field, ranges from how to say bonjour (stress the first syllable, it’s more assertive, students learn) to ploys for chatting up men and women.

On hand to impart knowledge and advice are Veronique Jullien, the bubbly, big-haired founder of the 4-year-old school; a sexologist; and a womanizer who doesn’t like the Paris Metro but rides it anyway to hunt new female prospects.

“Being seductive is a physical activity, like sports,” Jullien, 42, tells the class. “We have to train to become the champions of our own lives.”

Also the co-author of a book on seduction, Jullien hopes to take the techniques she has polished and find partners or franchisees to open “French seduction schools” in Los Angeles and in New York.

For the really desperate, her establishment on Paris’ Right Bank offers one-on-one tutoring sessions that last four months, at a cost of $2,075. Students are given a psychological test to help them understand their strengths and weaknesses. The fashion-challenged receive what the French call a “relooking,” or wardrobe make-over.

The final, and most challenging, exercise during tutoring is on how to start a conversation with someone who catches your fancy in a cafe, park or other public place. For this, the student and a “coach” head out into Paris, the goal being to charm store clerks, people sitting on benches in the Luxembourg Gardens or other strangers.

The point, or the whole point anyway, isn’t learning how to score, but how to charm, entice and intrigue so one can ultimately move in for the kiss--or more.

“Seducers must be chameleons and adapt to the situation,” Jean Naegels, 48, the school’s resident ladies man, instructs the seminar. “Do it with humor and you’ll never be put down.”

The class touches from time to time on Dale Carnegie’s techniques for making friends, Taoism and the hierarchy of needs theory of American psychologist Abraham H. Maslow. But the essential message is to stop spending evenings alone in front of the TV set and get into the game. The school’s can-do motto is the same as that of Britain’s SAS commandos: “Who dares, wins.”

That doesn’t mean all the time, cautions the baby-faced, silver-haired Naegels, who coaches male clients on how to be more pleasing to the opposite sex. His own batting average, he says modestly, is .200--one in every five women he pursues.

“I must seduce--it’s a need,” he says. Seminar participants listen with the same attention as Little Leaguers receiving batting tips from Mark McGwire.

Students make voluminous notes as nuts-and-bolts information is doled out. Movie theaters, they are told, are lousy places to pick up people, unless you manage to connect with someone while waiting in the line. Far more promising, explain Jullien and her staff, is to head for a supermarket about 7 p.m., and see who is buying a frozen dinner or a single hamburger patty.

Also, the instructors advise, look for women visiting the Louvre or other museums in the morning alone. If you’re a woman, go to a boxing match or other sporting event where men are in the majority.

For Blanvillain, all this information is akin to stumbling upon the password to Ali Baba’s cave.

“I’m going to dress up really well, go out to the shopping center tomorrow night and start looking for my future wife,” he says. Until now, the antenna specialist explains, he’s been trolling in the discotheques of Chartres, where the average age of the female clientele is about 16.

When some students object that their careers don’t leave them the time to go hunting for a mate, Jullien shrugs. She’s heard that before.

“Either your professional or your personal life is more important,” she says. “You will have to choose.”

Whether this wisdom could be transplanted from France, a country that joyfully celebrates the differences between the sexes, to the more unisex United States may be debatable. At one point, Michel Daous, the ponytailed sexologist, approvingly mentions an acquaintance who was so infatuated with a woman that he ran into her car to have a pretext for meeting her. That might not be so well-received on a California freeway or street.

Neither might one of Naegels’ gambits. If he spots a woman who interests him while driving, he stops beside her at a traffic light, rolls down his window and hands her a business card on which he has written: “If you have an hour to lose or gain, call me.” He insists that in 9 out of 10 cases Frenchwomen take his card, and half of them eventually call him.

Much of the advice dished out during the seminar is very gender-specific.

For men: “The best way to seduce a woman is to listen to her and show her that you are always available for her. . . . A woman needs to be surprised and made to laugh every day.”

For women: “Ladies, if the guy pleases you, don’t keep looking away and being coy. You’ve got to send him a sign. . . . But after you make that initial contact, you’ve got to backpedal a bit so the man doesn’t think you’re going to end up together in bed on the first day.”

At the School of Seduction, the belief is that all in love is fair. Is the person you covet married or committed to someone else? No problem; consider him or her that unfortunate person’s “future ex,” urges Beatrice Jeanroy, who plans to open a branch of the school this autumn in Lyon, France’s second-largest city.

Among the 700 clients Jullien has counseled in one-on-one sessions since opening her school, she has had men and women trying to rekindle the passion in their marriage or long-term relationship. For couples who want to measure how much romance remains between them, she offers this pithy advice: “Turn off the TV and unplug yourselves from the Internet for three months. You’ll soon find out.”

Do the French deserve their reputation for prowess in seduction? Not really, Jullien says. She used to have her own matrimonial agency in Paris, she says, but realized that even when she made a good match, the men and women often didn’t know what to say to each another. That gave her the idea for the school.

“Seduction is communication,” she says.

In reality, Jullien believes, the true world-class champions in her field are the Italians. When she was 34, she visited the Amalfi coast of southern Italy and was dazzled by the ability of Italian men to charm. It was like attending graduate school on the subject, she says. Later, she married an Italian.

But people whose national origins mean they can never be Latin lovers needn’t give up. Asked to name the world’s most seductive person, Jullien chooses not an Italian or a Frenchman, but a Scot: actor Sean Connery.

“He is the ultimate seducer,” she says. “He exudes this calm strength. He is like a tree that will never die.”

John-Thor Dahlburg can be reached at socalliving@latimes.com.

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Some Tips for Would-be Seducers At the not-always-politically correct School of Seduction in Paris, the staff maintains that seducers are not born but made. Here, just in time for Valentine’s Day, are a dozen of the school’s tips for how to be a skilled Gallic lover:

1. People who don’t shine can’t seduce others. You have to feel good about yourself. Or, as they put it at the school, the first person you must seduce and love is yourself.

2. Be energetic and diligent but also patient. Some butterflies fly 50 miles to mate. It may take you awhile to find your quarry and to woo him or her.

3. Be aware that the impression made during the first 10 seconds is not half the battle--it’s 95%. On the outside anyway, be confident, smiling, charming. Remember no one can see your stomach turning barrel rolls.

4. Get a regular spot for seeking dates (club, restaurant, gym) and frequent it. Let people know about you. In eating establishments, tip the maitre d’ or waitress to have prospects seated by you. Bartenders also can be sources of detailed information about people.

5. Men: Be aware women like to see a flash of vulnerability and timidity from time to time. “But don’t be a weeping willow,” the seduction school staff says. In general, women like men who seem strong, can handle their lives and take the initiative.

6. Women: If it’s you taking the first step, you’ll have to pull back at some point and put some distance between you and him so things don’t move too fast. (Female students at the seduction school recommend you check the man’s fingers early to see if there is a crease left by a removed wedding band.)

7. When pushing for that first date, don’t leave room for a no answer. Don’t say: How would you like to go to a restaurant Saturday night? Say: Japanese or Chinese?