French Postcards

I first saw this film in 1979 when it appeared on HBO. And it is MY coming of age movie. I found the tape recently in a video store and it brought back many happy memories. I was sad to learn Valérie Quennessen was killed in an auto accident in 1989. She was a beautiful and talented actress. Marie-France Pisier is still one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen, the one actor, who in my opinion, steals the movie is the great French actor Jean Rochefort who plays Monsieur Tessier. I sometimes cannot believe 22 years have passed since I first saw this movie. A must See !!

I would not give this film a lukewarm review at all (as some of the other reviews that I have read seem to have done). I would not try to put it in a box that it does not belong in, either. The truth of the matter is, I LOVED "French Postcards" exactly the way it was!! This was a highly entertaining and WONDERFUL story! I felt really good after watching it..........I watched it twice. In short, I thoroughly enjoyed it!

I felt that a lot of the main characters were very well drawn and believable. The acting was, by and large, superb! My favorite story within this story would have to be the one with Alex (the blond-haired American student and pianist) and Madame Tessier (the French director of the institute, where the American exchange students were enrolled). I especially like the very beautiful and adorable Mme. Tessier, played by Marie-France Pisier. It wasn't just that she was totally gorgeous as a "somewhat older woman" (Alex was a junior in college; Mme. Tessier was probably in her mid 30s). It was very admirable how passionate she was about her study abroad program. She appeared to be extremely devoted to her job.........and very professional. Toward the end of the movie she talked about her plan to open up schools all over France........and she was very excited about it.

I also liked that scene when she and Alex's girlfriend got into a cat fight over whose man Alex really was..........but even then, she still carried that off with a lot of class. She did not scream or make a scene. She seemed to hold her own, toe to toe, with Alex's old girlfriend with dignity. Among other things, she told her (in a very relaxed voice):

"You are a twenty-year-old school girl..........You don't know anything about love!"

If you have not yet seen the movie, you should know that Mme. Tessier certainly made Alex pay his dues! He worked extremely hard to earn the right to show his affections for her. She was really quite cold, in the beginning, and did try to dissuade him...........even lied to him that she did not like a piano song that he wrote for her (about Paris). Eventually she took the bait (and probably amazed Alex in the process). The story does paint Mme. Tessier as a very dedicated and serious, professional, French woman: a woman, who one day just had a weakness and caved............and allowed herself to become vulnerable in the arms, and in the heart, of a twenty-something American "stud". Though for many people it might be disturbing, that her involvement with him is adulterous (her husband is her business partner at the institute), in many ways it is a very sweet romance. There are actually quite a few things that are sweet (or delightful) about this movie (including a shot of the beautiful Seine river at sunset).

I saw this movie on HBO in December 1980------just weeks before I was slated to go off to Spain as an American college student (I spent my spring semester in Sevilla, Spain). Though this movie was about a very different country, it was still about a European country. It was extremely exciting for me to watch two hours of anecdotes, concerning experiences that I was very soon to be having (at least some of them, anyway; I did not try to steal away a program director's wife!)! Watching this film was even more delightful for me, since this was to be my first trip to Europe!

I am sure that I would have enjoyed this movie, almost as much, even if I had not studied abroad. On a personal note, I never made it to France, during my stay in Spain. It would be 17+ years later, before I trod on many of the same grounds that Alex, Joel, and Melanie trod (in "French Postcards"). I am pleased to say that my 1998 trip to France was everything that I thought it would be! The people were totally wonderful and delightful..........and I just loved them! More importantly, I loved France (just as I loved Mme. Tessier and "French Postcards", as a whole)!

This is a fun movie. It doesn't try to get any message across so it is easy on the eyes and brain. Everyone in the movie does a credible job. If you want to see a real beauty check out Valérie Quennessen (Toni). Also see "Summer Lovers" to see more of her. It is a shame that she has passed away. Check out "French Postcards" for a little French fun!

This fitfully flavoursome fromage about a naïve group of over-excitable American students experiencing a modestly hedonistic year of wine, women, and deliciously bad French rock music at a school in picturesque Paris, perhaps, offers the more forgiving, farce-minded viewers some fairly stale Poisson out of water shtick. These disparate, moderately endearing student protagonists 'studying' at the somewhat less-than august-looking 'Institute of French Studies' predictably fall into distinctly pre-digested food groups, the lonely, uptight wasp busybody (Blanche Baker), the nebbish nerd that somewhat miraculously gets the lava-hot mademoiselle (Miles Chapin), the self-appointed, would-be artisan Lothario (David Marshall Grant) who frustratingly gets the bums rush, and a youthful, barely used, quick-quipping Debra Winger form the savoury base of this salty bouillabaisse! There are noisome, sardonic skits about eating snails, clunky ruminations about the myriad, meaningless miasmas of human existence, a smattering of not so amiable couplings, some bemusingly bad, frisson-less bedroom farcing about, and a scintillatingly sexy sprinkle of groovy Gallic disco, plus an abjectly awful cameo by Mandy Patinkin as a skeezoid Iranian on the make, and legendary French Thespian Jean Rochefort's justifiably acerbic disdain for his students seems wholly genuine, and Huyck's sickly saccharine conclusion is nauseatingly glib, but, for reasons that momentarily elude me, there is something weirdly edifying about the ingenuous Miles Chapin heroically hooking up with a sublimely frisky French hottie (Valérie Quennessen), so, maybe, I somewhat reluctantly enjoyed the benign, wholesomely fluffy-headed frolics in 'French Postcards' a little more than I would be prepared to admit in public! The garishly goofy 'French Postcards gets my stamp of approval! All winsome word-japery aside, I genuinely dug on Lee Holdrige's magnifique score, and the gracefully beautiful Marie-France Pisier is truly mesmerizing to behold as wet dream supreme, the triumphantly titillating teacher Madame Catherine Tessier!

Where we lived didn't get cable TV until Dec. 1980 and this is the first film I can recall seeing on cable TV. It's funny but I'm pretty sure I've probably only seen this film just once but I remember most of it till this day.

Is this the best damn film ever made ? Uh, no. But this is just a sentimental one with me and I think if you see yourself in any or part of the characters in this film then you'll probably like it. And I think I saw myself in about two of them. I was even scheduled to take French 101 the next semester at school.

I read the other reviews on this Web page and I vaguely remember what Valérie Quennessen looked like but it's coming back to me (That teeny-tiny picture on this film's main Web page helps too). She was the shorthaired French girl that looks like ‘Trois couleurs: Rouge' (1994) Irène Jacob (or is it the Blue one's Juliette Binoche? I'm not sure it's been a long time.) I did think at the time she was kind of snooty in her initial behavior toward the character that was interested in her. Give the guy a break; he was several thousand miles from home and had difficulty speaking the language !

Note: Not only has miss Quennessen passed away but the only song I remember used in it Nicolette Larson's `Lotta Love', it seems she also passed away a couple of years ago.

Does this film really deserve its low rating that the 60 or so people who saw it gave it? Heck, I'll give it a 7 or 8 out of 10 and I've never given a film a 10 rating yet.

If you want to see this film then good luck. I've never seen it in a video store or for sale for that matter. It must be out of print.

If I ever see this thing again I'll write another comment on it. I'm curious if it's aged well.

Also, for the few people who've commented on it – thanks. I think I would value the opinion of someone who saw something or anything worthwhile in this film.

`A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.' -- Bernstein [Citizen Kane 1941].