The Dreamers

Its 3am here, but as the song goes, this city never sleeps. I’m watching the cars on the Brooklyn Bridge, headlights glinting like stars, their occupants heading who knows where – maybe over into Brooklyn Heights, along Atlantic Avenue into Queens, or perhaps further still, onto Long Island itself.

In the apartment all is quiet, save for the poignant sax of Roland Kirk on the stereo. Saul is telling me about his parents’ beach house on Long Island. Apparently each summer his family holds a reunion there, and he’d be delighted if I’d accompany him. Naturally I’m flattered, but politely decline, citing the very plausible excuse that it clashes with Bastille Day. He protests that I’m only half-French, but my mind is made up.

What I don’t tell him is that NYC is already beginning to needle me. I’m thinking like the taxi driver in Scorcese’s famous film - someday a real rain will come and wipe all the scum off the streets – it hasn’t happened yet.

The truth is that I’m not half-French. I was born and raised in a Parisian banlieue and educated at Bordeaux. My father was American, but apart from the language thing that’s as far as it goes. So I make my excuses and promise him some other time. He looks disappointed so I give him a hug. As Bogart once said, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

It feels like we're drifting into an incestuous relationship. rather like the young things in Bertolucci's movie The Dreamers. We spend days just talking - about art, literature, politics, but mainly about films. Saul obviously has the mind of an obsessive - but I'm willing to bet he isn't as good on European cinema.

Maybe if he comes to Paris we'll put it to the test?

The first time I saw The Dreamers I was dumbfounded. The film features the debut of Eva Green, looking uncannily like the young Sandrine, as she would have been in soixante huit. I began to think Bernardo was playing with my head, or the skunk was, one of the two. But actually the film is disappointing in some ways, with a vapid ending and no real structure. For me, it didn’t capture the spirit of ’68 – not the way my parents related it to me anyhow.

I guess the beach house can wait until the fall, when I'll return to NYC, in the company of la belle Helene. That promises to be an interesting menage a trois.