French Postcards

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.

This is a fun movie. It doesn't try to get any message across so it is easy on the eyes and brain. Everyone in the movie does a credible job. If you want to see a real beauty check out Valérie Quennessen (Toni). Also see "Summer Lovers" to see more of her. It is a shame that she has passed away. Check out "French Postcards" for a little French fun!

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!

"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."

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Ever fall in love with a movie, you know in your heart isn't the greatest of all time, but for whatever reason, you love it anyway ???

For me, this is that movie.

First saw it a few years after it's 1979 release on an early pay-per-view service (possibly, SelecTV ???), and fell hopelessly, head-over-heels in love with it.

I think it was probably because most of the actors in it are my age, and thus, was able to live vicariously through them, in effect, getting to "go" to school in France, even though I've never been there.....

Sadly, two of the lovely women starring in it, died before their time, Marie-France Pisier ("Madame Tessier") at 66 (drowning), and Valérie Quennessen ("Toni") at a FAR too young 31 (car accident). And if you've never seen Ms. Quennessen in 1982's "Summer Lovers", do yourself a favor and track it down (again, maybe not the greatest film of all time, but the STUNNING scenes of GORGEOUS Greece (and Ms. Quennessen!), are worth the price of 'admission' alone!).

SO pleased too, that this film FINALLY got a dvd release, after so many, MANY years not being available on home video (though it did have a release on VHS, prior to that).

To anyone with a little bit of 'romance' left in your heart, give this one a chance......to those who don't, or can't remember the feeling of being young and in love, don't bother.....

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