Educating Rita

Educating Rita is certainly a film, among other things, about the power of the haircut. For most of the film Michael Caine's character mopes up and down the screen, inspiring pathos. On first glance we think that we feel pity for him because he is an alcoholic and failed poet whose wife has left him for better poetry. But when, towards the end of the film, in the ultimate act of love, Rita gives him a haircut and we see him stepping on to the plane to start a new life in Australia, our pity dissipates. The new haircut inspires our confidence and makes us believe that this two year sabbatical in Australia may really be the start of a new life and not just a re-make in a tropical location of his previous shenanigans with the whisky bottle. All along it was his hairdo that aroused our pity.

This is not to say that I am an advocate of the "get your haircut and get a job" school of thought. I quite like longish locks on both girls and boys, but I think a regular trim to get rid of split ends and keep hair bouncy is an important human renewal process - like a bored snake should shed its skin.

In Educating Rita, working class Rita takes an open university learning class in literature in order to "find herself", against the wishes of her husband who would prefer that she act like a baby machine and start "popping 'em out". Michael Caine, suffering from an extended bout of ennui from teaching literature to undergraduates, becomes her professor.

The professer/student relationship between the characters of Michael Caine and Rita (Julie Walters) reminds me a little of my own relations with my French teacher. She isn't a failed poet (not that I'm aware of anyway) but she does let me babble on about my life, in the same way that Michael Caine listens to Rita.

My French teacher is an enigma. Even though she has been coming to my house every week for nearly a year I know very little about her and she has all the dirt on me. Part of the reason for this is that when we first started I was still unable to construct questions in French. It was much more natural for me to make statements about myself than ask her questions.

Rita wanted to learn to write essays and talk about books like the rich kids on the university quadrangle. Me too, I'd like to be able to speak French like "them ones out there", that is, basically everyone else in Paris. But I'm like Rita, who in the race to air her thoughts, to let them breathe, just lets them blow out of her without any structure. In the almighty rush to use words, to communicate, to tell stories, I pay no heed to the framework of french grammar, I speak any which way I can as long as it gets the message across.

Oh of course the situation is no where near as dire as it used to be when I'd go into the boulangerie in pursuit of a baguette and come out with three pain aux raisins. But it seems that I am currently dozing on a plateau. Part of the reason for this is admittedly a lack of zest when it comes to studying French grammar. I could also cite working in english from home and having lots of english speaking friends. But there is also the problem caused by speaking franglais all the time.
What are you mange-ing?
A pomme, d'you want to mange a bit of it?

It's got to the point where I'm unintentionally slipping English words into the conversation with my French teacher. I'm not talking about when you aren't sure of the French word so you just grab the the english word, umm `eruption', and say it in a french way - éruption. More often than not you get lucky and bingo the French word (except in the case of the back-stabbing faux amis).

I'm talking about when I say the English word (when of course I know the French word) because I am so used to speaking Franglais - picking and choosing and throwing in the French word when the English word has gone walkabout.

Can you speak French? I can understand french. That is, there's not much I don't understand in a French film or a conversation and I can read any dusty old french tome you want to lend me, but I'm still not great in spoken and written french. The problem with being a French understander is that it doesn't show on the surface (unless you're pushing a door when you should be pulling it and then you clearly don't understand). So when I speak to people in French they assume that my comprehension is on the same level as my spoken French and so I get lumped in the not very french at all category when I believe I belong in the not really french group.