Cyrano de Bergerac (or, Make Love AND War, But Mainly Love)

Last week, I think it was Monday or Tuesday, I ate snails.

Don't think I didn't tell you because I was ashamed or anything, it is just that I was waiting to show you the photos. Seeing as I have taken to not carrying my camera around with me as obsessively as I once did, I tend to rely on others to upload theirs to their chosen corner of the web before I can adorn my posts with their prettiness.

So here it is, courtesy of Steff.



It all went down at Bergerac's, a French restaurant on King Street, where we were served by the magnificently French Mathilde. (I think she may have known someone at the table because she was terribly familiar with us and at one point even drank our wine, ZUT ALORS!)

Aaaanyway, as far as long winded introductions go, very few people at our rambunctious table of ten (How do you ask a deaf man if he wants to buy a chicken?) had any idea of why there were numerous portraits of a nasally endowed gentlemen adorning the walls of the establishment.

I took it upon myself to educate at least one of them. I enticed her in with promises of Tuna Surprise and the chance to see me in tears.

I love Cyrano de Bergerac. It is one of the many films I revisit often if I want to give myself a good cry session (though I did manage to refrain this time around). It is one of those films that takes me right back to those introverted days, when I would pine away at the thought of love but never dare to dream of grasping at it.

Deppardieu is resplendent as Cyrano, the self-proclaimed grotesque with a soul full of poetry, a hopeless case of love and a handsome protege/mouthpiece. It is his film. He commands the eyes and ears in every scene. He gets to run around being swashbucklery in countless vistas of beautiful French countryside as well as a chateau or two. He gets to recite his heartfelt poetry to the stirring strings of the magnificently lush score. His plight is plausibly heartbreaking, and made all the more so through the dramatic irony that we know that his love is far from hopeless.

Of course, it is difficult spending a whole movie wanting to slap sense into the main character but the dramatically tragic ending more than makes amends for all that pent up admonishment.

Add Cyrano de Bergerac to my list of films you must see before you go to another French restaurant.