French Postcards

FRENCH POSTCARDS is one of those movies you watch when there's nothing else on (at least that was the case for me). It's a harmless little movie with some nice shots of Paris and a story you've probably seen in dozens of other movies. It also has a couple of lovely French actresses (France-Piser and Quennessen)and a pretty American (Baker). And stay on the lookout for Debra Winger, before she was a star. It's a likeable movie overall.

This film is a must see for anyone who has ever been an American exchange student abroad. It perfectly captures the mixture of foreignness and familiar that is part and parcel of the exchange experience. The different types of approaches that one might have to an exchange year abroad are well illustrated.

It is, by no means, a great film, but it continues to endure in my memory as a good representation of what my year in Brazil, broadly speaking, was like. Lots of attractive actors, beautiful scenes and a surprising amount of humorous and witty dialog.

I have this on videotape, but the soundtrack has been changed from the original release and the subsequent showings on HBO. The most noticeable change is the opening scene on the bus. Madame Tessier is welcoming the new exchange students to France and tells them they need to immerse themselves in French culture and leave America behind. The bus driver, irritated with her prattling, pops in a tape of a band doing a French version of Do You Believe In Magic (The Lovin' Spoonful). It totally captures how American culture has infiltrated the world's cultures. In the videotape release they replace this song with some generic pop music. They must not have been willing to pay for the musical rights to the song. It's not quite as effective, but it is still a great start to a fun, romantic movie about coming of age in a foreign land.

This truly is a delightful, lite film that will give you a 95 minute taste of living abroad. Rent it if you can and hope that it shows up on DVD sometime soon.

"French Postcards" is a light-hearted romantic comedy that was probably seen by more people on cable TV than in the theater.

Two rising stars have supporting roles in this film.

Mandy Patinkin plays "Sayyid." He won a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for playing Che Guevera in "Evita" on Broadway in 1979... the same year "French Postcards" was released. He went on to star opposite Barbra Streisand in the film "Yentl," and to act in many other movies including another favorite of mine, "The Princess Bride." He's appeared in numerous Broadway productions and also played for years in the TV series "Chicago Hope."

The other actor to watch for is Debra Winger who plays "Melanie." She went on to roles in "Urban Cowboy," "An Officer and a Gentleman," and "Terms of Endearment," and is a three-time Oscar nominee.

As a reporter, I got to interview Winger when "Cannery Row" was released and asked her about her memories of "French Postcards." She said she was not happy about the way the film turned out because "Melanie" apparently played a much larger role in the original script as shot. She felt too much of her work was left on the cutting room floor during editing, and that her major character had been relegated to a lesser role. Judging from what's happened since, she was probably right.

After "French Postcards," Willard Huyck went on to direct the bombs "Best Defense," and "Howard the Duck."

This fitfully flavoursome fromage about a naïve group of over-excitable American students experiencing a modestly hedonistic year of wine, women, and deliciously bad French rock music at a school in picturesque Paris, perhaps, offers the more forgiving, farce-minded viewers some fairly stale Poisson out of water shtick. These disparate, moderately endearing student protagonists 'studying' at the somewhat less-than august-looking 'Institute of French Studies' predictably fall into distinctly pre-digested food groups, the lonely, uptight wasp busybody (Blanche Baker), the nebbish nerd that somewhat miraculously gets the lava-hot mademoiselle (Miles Chapin), the self-appointed, would-be artisan Lothario (David Marshall Grant) who frustratingly gets the bums rush, and a youthful, barely used, quick-quipping Debra Winger form the savoury base of this salty bouillabaisse! There are noisome, sardonic skits about eating snails, clunky ruminations about the myriad, meaningless miasmas of human existence, a smattering of not so amiable couplings, some bemusingly bad, frisson-less bedroom farcing about, and a scintillatingly sexy sprinkle of groovy Gallic disco, plus an abjectly awful cameo by Mandy Patinkin as a skeezoid Iranian on the make, and legendary French Thespian Jean Rochefort's justifiably acerbic disdain for his students seems wholly genuine, and Huyck's sickly saccharine conclusion is nauseatingly glib, but, for reasons that momentarily elude me, there is something weirdly edifying about the ingenuous Miles Chapin heroically hooking up with a sublimely frisky French hottie (Valérie Quennessen), so, maybe, I somewhat reluctantly enjoyed the benign, wholesomely fluffy-headed frolics in 'French Postcards' a little more than I would be prepared to admit in public! The garishly goofy 'French Postcards gets my stamp of approval! All winsome word-japery aside, I genuinely dug on Lee Holdrige's magnifique score, and the gracefully beautiful Marie-France Pisier is truly mesmerizing to behold as wet dream supreme, the triumphantly titillating teacher Madame Catherine Tessier!

Where we lived didn't get cable TV until Dec. 1980 and this is the first film I can recall seeing on cable TV. It's funny but I'm pretty sure I've probably only seen this film just once but I remember most of it till this day.

Is this the best damn film ever made ? Uh, no. But this is just a sentimental one with me and I think if you see yourself in any or part of the characters in this film then you'll probably like it. And I think I saw myself in about two of them. I was even scheduled to take French 101 the next semester at school.

I read the other reviews on this Web page and I vaguely remember what Valérie Quennessen looked like but it's coming back to me (That teeny-tiny picture on this film's main Web page helps too). She was the shorthaired French girl that looks like ‘Trois couleurs: Rouge' (1994) Irène Jacob (or is it the Blue one's Juliette Binoche? I'm not sure it's been a long time.) I did think at the time she was kind of snooty in her initial behavior toward the character that was interested in her. Give the guy a break; he was several thousand miles from home and had difficulty speaking the language !

Note: Not only has miss Quennessen passed away but the only song I remember used in it Nicolette Larson's `Lotta Love', it seems she also passed away a couple of years ago.

Does this film really deserve its low rating that the 60 or so people who saw it gave it? Heck, I'll give it a 7 or 8 out of 10 and I've never given a film a 10 rating yet.

If you want to see this film then good luck. I've never seen it in a video store or for sale for that matter. It must be out of print.

If I ever see this thing again I'll write another comment on it. I'm curious if it's aged well.

Also, for the few people who've commented on it – thanks. I think I would value the opinion of someone who saw something or anything worthwhile in this film.

`A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.' -- Bernstein [Citizen Kane 1941].