April 2024
Tender, yet cynical. Leisurely. Queasy.
Reason to own demitasses.
You’ll want two to three hours. No crass quickies here. Making love at 2 or 3pm concludes with putting your clothes back on in no great hurry, then absentmindedly fixing your hair. It begins in a similarly leisurely fashion.
Stéphane Audran and Jacqueline Sassard in ‘Les Biches’ (Claude Chabrol, 1968)
If you work from home, are unemployed or retired, consider yourself blessed.
Catherine Deneuve and Roger Van Hool in ‘La Chamade’ (Alain Cavalier, 1968)
No hotel rooms, chez vous only. No sweatpants.
Carole
Bouquet and Fernando Rey in ‘That Obscure Object of Desire’ (Luis Buñuel, 1977)Daytime lovemaking was practically a given in French* films from the late 1960s through the early 2000s. Trysts were intimate yet matter-of-fact. Couples brought their full midday selves to the bedroom instead of their 9pm dregs, and after making love would return to their workaday lives.
That is, if they worked. Their hardest job was not letting these rendezvous destroy them.
*Claro, Buñuel was Spanish, but it was in France that he made his name and his movies
All of the European lovers are white. They’re married, rich, bourgeois, bored, or creepily unfulfilled. When I started watching these movies in my 20s, I was too taken by their settings and outfits to consider their amorality. Being sensual in the afternoon, on a weekday, no less, was an audacious, attractive idea.
No partner required. It can be an afternoon with a femme fatale friend eager to teach you how to please...yourself.
Sabrina Seyvecou and Coralie Revel in ‘Secret Things’ (Jean-Claude Brisseau, 2002)
Or being tied up and left in the apartment, alone, to think.
Catherine Doucey and François Berléand in ‘Romance’ (Catherine Breillat, 1999)
Thecoarsenessofthewordwasreason enoughnottodoit,though therewereplentymorereasons. Ibarelyhadtimeforasaladatmydesk, muchlessatenderafternoonin myapartment.Ilivedinsomereal dumps,andcatatonicjunkiesand flyingmice(youreadthatright) definitelydiscouragedtheidyll.
If these lovers had only half an hour to seduce and be seduced, I doubt they’d have bothered with any of it An afternoon without conversation, caresses, cigarettes, candies in noisy wrappers, cakes, coffee, AND sex was... regular life. Intolerable. The edge tasted much better TIME WAS, WE CALLED IT A NOONER!
StéphaneAudranandMauriceRonetin‘LaFemmeInfidèle’(ClaudeChabrol,1969)
We’ll go with regular-shmegular.
It could be a practice or a conversation that fills you with passion and tumult.
Michel Piccoli and Emmanuelle Béart in ‘La Belle Noiseuse’ (Jacques Rivette, 1991)
Or stepping out for coffee with nothing on under your coat.
Having
it in the bath may have to wait until the weekend.
Jacqueline Sassard in ‘Les Biches’ (Claude Chabrol, 1968)
Tuesday, and you’ve been looking good for hours already Teeth are clean, mind is working. You’re sob Awake and fresh, before and after.
Juliette Binoche and Jeremy Irons in ‘Damage’ (Louis Malle, 1992)
The difference is, now you’re gentle, and the day isn’t over yet.
