I’ve heard it said that one of the biggest gripes of a language learner is to attempt to string together a simple sentence in a foreign language, only to have the listener reply ‘Do you speak English?’ in English.

This isn’t a problem for me. I don’t seem to run into the English speakers.

In fact, I’ve been guilty of doing it to someone else.

You see, I live near Musée Marmottan in Paris. It’s just across some gardens that are facing my apartment, but that’s really all I knew about it. I spend a lot of time in those aforementioned gardens “playing” as I’m here working as an au pair, and I’d constantly be asked for directions to this Monet museum. At first, I only bothered acquainting myself with the signs indicating the direction to the museum, because wherever I was I could always point to a sign.

Luckily, I stumbled across the actual museum one day in my wanderings, so now I’m pretty much set as a local tour guide.

But one day I was greeted by a group of women as I left my building, who stopped me and launched into all the trappings of what seemed to be a very well-phrased request for directions. I tried not to look too panicked and silently implored that I would know where the place in question was and how to give the directions.

Blah-blah-blah, the lady went on, until she uttered the crucial words – Musée Marmottan – in the thickest American accent I’d ever heard. I don’t know how to convey it in text so you’ll just have to imagine.

I did it. My reply was ‘Do you speak English?’ and all five of us let out a collective sigh of relief and laughed too heartily as a nervous reaction.

Gosh I felt like a little do-gooder that day!

I haven’t quite figured out the time management skills required to see an exhibition that isn’t in its final closing moments… so, true to form, I bustled through the Chaïm Soutine exhibition at the Pinacothèque de Paris with the rest of the last minute crowds.

Born in 1893 near Minsk, in the small Jewish settlement of Smilovichi, Soutine left the Russian Empire and Vilnius School of Fine Arts for Paris. Based around Montparnasse and living in the fabled artistic centre La Ruche (The Beehive), Soutine is a key figure in the Parisian cultural legacy of noble or artistic poverty, Eastern European émigrés and Expressionism.

The exhibition opened with the products of Soutine’s youth, predominantly from his wretchedly poor period in the 1910s. Using rich colours to give the works life, Soutine presents ultimately distorted visions of everyday life. It’s grotesque, yes (he even goes as far as entitling one of his works as such), but it’s no where near as horrific as the previous exhibition I’ve written about, that of 16th century Italian artist, Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Soutine treats his subjects warmly, and his depictions of the grotesque have not been undertaken with detachment.

Soutine left Paris in 1918 for Cagnes on the Côte d’Azur, and then settled in the Pyrenees town of Céret for three years. This was followed by a stint (1923-25) divided between Paris and the vicinity of Cagnes (the so-called ‘Cagnes period’). During this era, the works shift focus (reiterated by a descent into the Pinacothèque basement) and become muddled landscapes and muffled portraits. Soutine depicts villages all in a jumble, like hazy memories souvenired from Mediterranean towns, basked in a warm sunlight but lacking structure and foundation. It’s just like German Expressionism mixed with one too many beakers of pastis… with a bit of hanging meat and the odd suspended produce still-life thrown in for good measure.

A fascinatingly vivid exhibition in terms of content, but the layout and access to a logical flow of information maybe left a little to be desired…

I have to mention some more about the comic book series Les Parisiens, because I was reminded about a certain joke the other day. I was waiting at Invalides RER station and was repeatedly asked in English and French if it was the right line for the Eiffel Tower (and it’s only February!)

It reminded me of a scene I saw whilst having a flick through the bandes dessinées (BD) at the Angoulême Comic Book Festival, in which a man is asked in different languages every few steps of his journey in the streets of Paris for directions to the Louvre. He utters the same, curt response each time (something like “straight ahead, then first left”) until a curvaceous young female backpacker in a revealing singlet and barely-there cut-off jeans asks the same question. His response, informative and courteous, reads like the Petit Larousse dictionary entry for the Louvre (ha, ha, ha).

Or take this for a scenario – a Parisian finds an unconscious body on the street. He takes out his phone to call for help, then the phone rings with an incoming call. The man chats on to his long-lost acquaintance over the inert body, and then strolls off as he plans to meet the guy for coffee.

Here’s another: a woman goes to a glorious outdoor marketplace. The scenario is typically provincial French, and she and the greengrocer wax lyrical over the qualities, colour and texture of a delectable organic aubergine. One hour later, after the crush of the crowd on the dark and dusty metro and the road rage of the traffic above ground, the woman returns home to realise she’s late, and her children are already waiting for their lunch. The scene ends with the children cheering over their meal: “Yum! Ravioli from a can! We love it when you go to the bio-market, Mum!”

Simple tastes, yes… but it makes me giggle!

Actually, I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this earlier (other than my last post), and considering it’s Guillaume’s annual suggestion as what to get my mother for Christmas – I’d better rectify the situation.

Dieux du Stade – if this name rings a bell (and your blood runs a little hot), you’re probably scrolling down already to see if I’ve included any photographs (yet patience is a virtue, I’ve got a story to tell first).

Now it all began back in summer 2007, when I was crash-course revising rugby union, pretending that I had in fact invented the game and followed it all my life, just to get a job writing English commentaries for the Rugby World Cup in France. Writing a synopsis of the Argentinean team led me to the boys of the Stade Français and their lurid pink lily uniforms… but then I discovered that they’re even better known when they get their kit off!

It all began back in 2001, a calendar with nude and semi-nude pictures of the Stade Français players was released to try and put a bit of spark back into the club and into rugby in general. 15,000 copies were sold, and the marketing machine took off. Since 2004, a “making-of” DVD has accompanied the calendar for each year, and the figures for the 2007 calendar stand at a whopping 200,000 sales. Needless to say, the erotic and homoerotic pics are a hit with both the lads and the ladies, and wider audience appeal for the game has been of course assured.

I’m always one for parody though – and it was with glee that I discovered Les Odieux Du Stade (édition 2008) the Angoulême International Comics Festival. Part of the BD series Les Rugbymen, the calendar pokes fun at the whole Dieux du Stade shebang.

… And don’t worry, Mum, neither will be posted over to you any time soon!

I think it’s safe to write about the Angoulême International Comics Festival in terms of obsession. It’s a whole other artistic world out there – one that is prone to a little fanaticism, but I was just there to watch and learn.

I think perhaps I was hoping to pick up an understanding of bandes dessinées (BD) by osmosis, and to a certain extent this was true. With some of the comics I was lulled into appreciation by the vivid graphics and had a flick through without any real attempt to pick up the story. With others, I attempted to have a read where the French seemed simple enough – but this was mainly in BD with really obvious jokes and running gags, or simplistically illustrated biographies of 1920s libertines, like the account of Kiki de Montparnasse by Catel & Bocquet in the Festival’s Official Selection.

Catered for all tastes – from cooking manga and children’s Christian comics to the history of Rasputin and vampish gothic erotic – the festival prompted me to realisation of life’s big questions (i.e. that I much prefer the rugged, aesthetic histories of Hugo Pratt to the haggard exaggeration of Enki Bilal, for instance).

Of the comical BD, I laughed along purely because I could understand the jokes. Like the Bamboo comics Rugbymen parody of the Dieux du Stade calendar or the Fonctionnaires (public servants) edition entitled “Métro, Dodo, Dodo” (playing on the popular phrase “Métro, Boulot, Dodo” which describes the working life routine of transport, job, sleep). The one I could relate most to was the Parisiens. Being greeted by this cover certainly made me smile knowingly – for the image depicted a swearing and seething mass of cars, buses and motorbikes, all at an aggressive stand-still, ground to a halt by a sweet infirm of a grandmother crossing the road at a pedestrian crossing.

Actually – back to real life – there are all sorts of posters around Paris at the moment advertising the new film by the Coen brothers, No Country for Old Men. Obviously, they hadn’t been to Paris, because then the film would have been entitled No Place for Old Men and it would have been all about the perils of the elderly attempting to reverse park their cars and copping a mouthful and hornful from the rest of the traffic…

It’s a good question actually: what is BD? Who are these ominous-sounding bédéphiles? And why does there seem to be a delicate balance of hormones, red wine and bandes dessinées flowing through the veins of French males?

I decided to investigate.

Lucky for me, it didn’t require a mission any more taxing than a weekend back to Guillaume’s hometown, Angoulême, for the International Comic Book Festival. Yup, that’s right - bandes dessinées (BD) are comic books.

When I first arrived in France from Russia, a few years ago now, for a two-week summer vacation with Guillaume, I was a little stunned on seeing his childhood bedroom. Admittedly, he had left the place for his studies at about 15, but nevertheless, it was quite an eerie souvenir of his youth. What really shocked me was his massive collection of comic books – I mean honestly, what kind of guy was I dating? My fears were somewhat quelled when I visited his father’s house – and there was an even bigger collection of comics. If it was hereditary, there was nothing I could do about it. I then found out it was regional, and that BD provides Angoulême her lifeblood and even international recognition.

It’s national too. In my essential dictionary of all things French, Pardon my French, Charles Timoney writes that if you ‘walk around any French bookshop – known as ‘une librarie’ – despite the fact that this might make you think of a library – and you will spot a huge range of cartoon books in quantities far greater than you would ever see in the UK.’

Further “research” on the topic revealed (ok, ok, it was just me chuckling away whilst flicking through Stephen Clarke’s Talk to the Snail) that ‘these days the most inventive French artists are much more interested in comic books, or BD (”bay-day”, an abbreviation of bande dessinée), than straight art. But these should never be called ‘comic books’. They are the neuvième art, and must be taken very seriously. And it is definitely not polite to say that the best BD artists are Belgian.’

Keeping all that in mind, I was ready to brave the festival.

With true last-minute aplomb, it seems that everyone in Paris had just realised that the legendary art nouveau boulevard Haussmann department stores were decorated for Christmas. However, we found ourselves amongst the pack at Printemps and Galeries Lafayette the other day for an entirely other (but far more dubious) pretext.

I’m glad we went though (but I’d already seen the decorations pre-Christmas in surprisingly far less of a crowd), as these 9ème arrondissement grands magasins are a sight worth seeing. Graced by stained glass and cupolas, they date back to the era of the rebuilding and modernisation of Paris by civic planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann in the mid- to late-nineteenth century.

I’m surprised Guillaume and I didn’t get stopped by visa control on entering the ostentatious upper levels of Galeries Lafayette though. We were obviously illegal aliens, entering foreign territory, but I had to hiss whisper to Guillaume “we can’t scoff too much, we’re in their designer world now…”

But this is like complaining of a chill in Antarctica, what was I honestly expecting?

Just as I was getting a bit antsy in the crush of people, Guillaume pulled me from the chaos on into a subterranean arcade to show me a shop he had discovered a few days earlier. It turned out to be the retail space of an “As seen on TV” shop, masquerading as a chic Paris boutique. It was awful. Guillaume wandered through shop, entranced by the bad taste and marvels of mail-order inventions, whilst I stood outside on the verge of a hissy fit.

In revenge, I took a catalogue to add to our collection of toilet reading magazines. It lasted only a few days at our place before Guillaume banished it to the recycling bin on the charge of bad grammar and ridiculous claims about a set of kitchen carving knives ‘used in aeronautics and surgery.’

Oh come off it! (or as the French would say, n’importe quoi – my new favourite expression, especially when pronounced as if the four syllables were distinctly emphasised individual words).

We went back to Angoulême last weekend to kick off the festive season gluttony with a birthday party for Guillaume’s grandmother. I’m still trying to metaphorically patch up where I burst at the seams, and my girth has considerably expanded… but really, I’m just creating health and fitness resolutions to be made and broken for 2008.

It’s high time I mentioned a little more about Angoulême though, as it’s a nice enough place with the unique oddity of being France’s self-crowned “comic book capital”. If I were to elaborate on the French obsession with BD (from bande dessinée, the French term for comic strip), I’d be here all day… so I think it’s sufficient to recommend that you have a look in a French bookshop, marvel and the quantity and variety of BD available, and then come back to me if you have any further questions.

Central Angoulême is surrounded by the city wall ramparts. These ancient fortifications give the old town a strange, elevated feel – from the Charente River below it almost looks like a castle in the sky, levitating above the rest of the urbanscape. From the ramparts, the view stretches on, as far as the eye can see, over the river, train station, industrial areas and then fields. Come mid-September, the usually serene character of this setting changes completely, as Angoulême hosts the historic Circuit des Remparts race, which is, incidentally, the world’s largest gathering of pre-war Bugattis and British vintage cars… (save that one for the local pub trivia night!)

A centre of printing and paper-making since the fourteenth century, Angoulême is now associated with the graphic arts of animation and illustration. Home to the national comic book museum, the Musée de la Bande Dessinée, the town also hosts the annual Angoulême International Comics Festival. Even on a day-to-day basis, you can’t ignore Angoulême’s connection with comics, as the town is decorated by murs peints or comic-book fresco painted walls, which makes for a great wander through the picturesque and pedestrianised old town centre.

Not only does Le Havre’s Musée Malraux proudly boast of holding the second most extensive collection of impressionist paintings in France after the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, but it is also a hub of youth culture.

Mid-afternoon on a Saturday, our attention was alerted to a growing throng of teenagers in the centre of town. We moseyed on over to check out the unfolding spectacle, only to be strangely surprised. What had initially appeared to be a concert was no more than hundreds crowded around a car with a sound system blaring electro. Fair enough, an impromptu rave. But the most astonishing was the style of dancing that everyone was adopting. I don’t know if I can explain it, but it was a frenetic swirl of arms, a lot of motion centred around the head, with occasional simultaneous horizontal thrusts of the hands. The feet remained more or less stationary, perhaps with some jumping that was blocked from the onlooker’s view by the rest of the crowd. I felt simultaneously superior to this silly group behaviour, but also aged. Was this the new trend, sweeping the world, and I hadn’t realised? I’ve found out subsequently that it even has a name – Tecktonik – one that adheres fully to the sub-cultural electronic music obsession with the letter “k.”

The strange thing is that no-one had any alcohol, and the party was dispersed by night-time. Wow, united by a love of beats? I thought that type of stuff only happened in ecstatic fairy-tales!

… And the Musée Malraux had an exhibition showcasing the work of Le Havre-born artist, Émile-Othon Friesz. Spanning thirty years and some 150 works, the exhibition was a fascinating portrayal of the development of Friesz as an artist. From impressionism to fauvism to expressionism – and the transitory stages in between – Friesz’s works indicate many shifting influences and also changes of geography from the north to the south of France. Very interesting, I can hear you all thinking, but where is more of that ludicrous dancing? Here, let me quench your thirst with a video…

The new single by French act Yelle A Cause des Garçons featuring Tecktonik dancers. Long live the Reebok Pumps! Also check out the linked video entitled ‘The Best of Tecktonik Dance.’ It’s too funny for words!

Now everyone in Paris can breathe a sign of relief as the fever pitch of Rugby World Cup madness has thankfully ebbed without causing any lasting damage or too much scarring. The month-long stint of the giant rugby ball dangling from the Eiffel Tower has come to its natural culmination, and everyone can get on with looking stylish whilst riding on bicycles. Things can just get back to normal.

Which gets me thinking about normality and surrealism – and where better to ponder that than in the halls of the Musée du Luxembourg with visual stimulation provided by 16th century Italian artist, Giuseppe Arcimboldo?

And here I was thinking that rugby players had cauliflower ears – they don’t even come close!

In quite possibly the most interesting exhibition I’ve seen in Paris thus far, the Arcimboldo collection is a creepy but amazing display of the possibility of imagination – or the product of derangement. The extent to which either or both are applicable is still being debated.

For those who aren’t familiar with Arcimboldo’s works, he is famed for his anthropomorphic natural images – where the contents of one’s modern-day grocery trolley take the form of realisable human form portraits.

Fruit, vegetables, seafood and flowers transform into eyes, ears, mouths and noses. In his repeated studies of the seasons, the youth of spring is light garlands of flowers, summer is heavy with ripe fruits, autumn brings its substantial harvest, and then winter presents a harrowing image of decay and withered remnants.

Far from being a light-hearted take on painting, a lot of the images are really haunting. For squirm-value, ‘Water’ has to be seen to be believed. A collection of crustaceans and slippery sea-dwellers have been assembled to create a rather aristocratic portrait. The image is so true to theme, it’s even adorned with pearl jewellery!