Subtitles not included

MANILA, Philippines – One of the more frustrating things about visiting France is that they happen to speak French there. Like, all the time. This can be a strong incentive to brush up on your high school French, but it’s not really conducive to deep, meaningful conversations, unless you think exchanges like the following are deep and meaningful:

ME: “Er… Il est aujourd hui?” (It’s today, today?)

BEMUSED FRENCH PERSON (after some reflection): “Oui, c’est aujourd hui.” (Yes, this is today.)

ME: “Oui, oui, oui… Er, le ciel est bleu aujourd hui?” (Yes, yes, yes… Er, the sky is blue today?)

With conversations like that, it’s no wonder French people prefer silence. Fortunately, there are signs all over Paris, instructing foreigners on how to proceed in the wonderland that is France. But these, too, are in French, and it can be puzzling to figure out what’s going on sometimes.

For example, visiting Nice, as we did recently, it’s confusing to enter a public park and find that you are unwittingly strolling down Allée Miles Davis or Rue de Duke Ellington. I knew the French were jazz lovers, but it’s odd to suddenly find yourself in Birdland. I almost took a wrong turn down Ornette Coleman Avenue, where I’m sure I would have gotten completely lost.

Even McDonald’s has its own flair with the language. The McChicken Sandwich over there is called Le Mythic (heaven knows why), and the billboards and signs for this particular concoction offer public health reminders (in French) to “exercise regularly” and “eat healthily.” Almost as subtle as cigarette ads.

Speaking of cigarettes, I was amused to find a local brand lying around a market vendor’s table in Aix-en- Provence called “Bastos.” Somehow I don’t think it translates the same as the Tagalog word, though.

After visiting so many quaint, charming villas, it was refreshing to stumble upon a shop that sold tasteless T-shirts to tourists (along with the ever-popular Kama Sutra dice): “Sea, Sex and Bouillabaise” combines life’s simple and not-so-simple pleasures, while “Je Suis Beau et Intelligent (après quelques bières)” (“I am good-looking and intelligent — after several beers”) would score cheese points in any language.

Simple, informative signs struck me as funny in France, such as the warning posted in Giverny, Monet’s countryside garden home, where turkeys and other fowl are kept in nearby pens. The sign above the pen read “S’il Vous Plait, Ne Derangez Pas Les Animaux” (Please, Don’t Upset the Animals), which seems to me good advice to follow in any social situation.

I went into the French immersion experience with good intentions, wanting to order fluently in restaurants, hoping to impress Gallic-faced servers with my impeccable phrasing and pronunciation. Mais non, non, non. The first few meals it was a challenge, it was fun, it was a pleasure to see that I could communicate in French and be understood; but after a couple days, I decided I was expending too much energy thinking about what I wanted to put in my stomach. By Day 5, I stopped visiting the A La Carte section and headed straight for Menu Formule, hoping to take away some of the guesswork. By Day 7, I’d simply ask for the plat du jour, trusting the cook to have enough sense and taste to put a few ingredients together. All sense of adventure had abandoned me by then; after that, it was plat du jour this and plat du jour that.

The most difficulty we had, next to deciphering restaurant menus, was finding DVDs. Since, at some point, we wanted to take a break from all the food, culture and art in France, we hit the biggest video/DVD shops there, which happen to be Virgin Megastore and FNAC. (The latter is really one of my favorite French haunts for bargain CDs and DVDs.) The only problem? Finding familiar movie titles when most everything is translated into French. Like Vincent Vega noted in Pulp Fiction, “in France, it’s just a little bit different…” Not even a Berlitz phrase book will help you much when French DVD distributors work their magic rendering US titles into the local parlance. For instance, if you want to find Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, you’ll have to poke around for La Mort Aux Trousses (meaning “Death At One’s Heels”). Confusing, no? And if you’re looking for Superbad, it’s been retitled Supergrave. Yet Shrek is still Shrek, Mamma Mia! is still Mamma Mia!, and Hellboy is still Hellboy. It can drive a cinephile fou (crazy).

Some translations are pretty literal, like Le Seigneur des Anneaux (Lord of the Rings) or Danse Avec Les Loups (Dances with Wolves). Oddly, TV shows stay pretty faithful to the original titles — stuff like Gossip Girl and Battlestar Galactica retain the English, while things like 24 Heures Chrono (24) or La Petite Maison dans la Prairie (Little House on the Prairie) are well within the grasp of even the remedial French language student. But something like One Tree Hill, I am told (because I did not seek this title out myself) comes back to you in French as Les Frères Scott (“The Scott Brothers”). And why are the French watching American trash TV like One Tree Hill, by the way?

Meanwhile, comedies get rearranged in all kinds of funny ways. The ‘70s cult hit by John Landis, Kentucky Fried Movie, gets reimagined for French viewers as Hamburger Film Sandwich. (Maybe they have something against fried chicken. Or Kentucky.) Speaking of burgers, the stoner hit Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle is rendered as Harold et Kumar Chassent Le Burger (“Harold and Kumar Seek a Burger”), which actually makes as much sense as the original title. (Another version of the DVD is titled Harold and Kumar Get the Munchies.)

A classic movie parody title like Airplane gets needlessly explanatory with the new name, Y a-t-il un Pilote dans L’avion? (“Is There a Pilot on the Airplane?”). The Billy Crystal-Robert De Niro comedy Analyze This clearly has no equivalent in French; bafflingly, it’s renamed Mafia Blues. Some titles are not so tough to unravel, though. Ace Ventura: Détective Pour Chiens et Chats doesn’t require much help to decipher. But La Folle journée de Ferris Bueller (“The Crazy Adventures of Ferris Bueller”) might require some explanation. (The familiar Matthew Broderick pose on the cover is a visual cue.)

Curiously, Lost in Translation stays Lost in Translation. But I challenge any American to go into an FNAC and track down Dude, Where’s My Car? (which, apparently, when spoken by a French person, sounds like Eh Mec! Elle Est Où Ma Caisse?).

Mon Dieu! You’ll need a week off watching Harold and Kumar movies after trying to get by without subtitles in France.