POPCORN PARK ZOO

In which the C-of-C-C Newsletter goes to the movies, or just sits around and watches TV.

Filed under: Sonic Connections, Other Cultural Matters, The Charmed & Delighted Division

By: Cliff Languor & Arturo Haus, Resident Partners in Film, TV, and the Cultural Tracing of Moods Both Fleeting and Foundational

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“What are the odds,” we wondered, “of stumbling across a paired homage to the French Nouvelle Vague?”

The answer: surprisingly high—if you happen to live within the uncanny rhythms of the Council’s media diet.

First, we rediscovered the original Paris-shot black-and-white video for Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer (our newly anointed favorite pop song), which plays like a soft-focus nod to Truffaut and Belmondo chic. Then, without planning it, we pulled up the film Youth in Revolt, which not only borrows from that same cinematic lineage, but explicitly name-checks both Truffaut and the New Wave sensibility.

Add to that a recent critic’s weary but inspired call for:

“…a spanking new hybrid: the paranoid-conspiracy coming-of-age teen-sex movie,”

(an apt description of An American Affair, which we’ve previously examined in BUNKED!),

and it seems the Nouvelle Vague never died—it just moved into suburban adolescence and learned to drive.

Was it synchronicity? Serendipity? Mild media-induced psychosis?

All we know is this: being Charmed and Delighted two days in a row felt improbable enough to register as meaningful. Which, by our standards, makes it true.

Of course, context matters.

We’ve gone from driver’s ed auditorium screenings of gruesome crash reels, to the slasher film era, to today’s apocalyptic-zombie-dystopian everything.

Somewhere along the way, charm and delight fell out of the cultural toolkit.

Maybe it’s time we looped back—not as a retreat, but as a radical act of imaginative reconstruction.

“We really do need more charm and delight to collectively imagine a better future.”

Addendum: From the Medium Link

“The original video, labelled “Kiss Me (Official Paris Version)” on YouTube, was shot in Paris entirely in black and white. Its cinematographic approach draws heavily on the style of French film director François Truffaut, and the video ends with a shot of a flower being placed on Truffaut’s grave.

It’s a very ‘art house’ tribute to his work… not necessarily the sort of artistic tribute you’d normally see in a pop music video—which only adds further to the gentle charm of ‘Kiss Me.’

Some might say the video is slightly pretentious and has little to do with the song or lyrics. That might be partly true. But I take the view that the world would be a dark and soulless place if we couldn’t enjoy an art-house video celebration of a French director’s work now and then—especially paired with one of the most charming songs ever written.”

Suggested Reading:

But lost to the subscription-for-content business model:

Accompanying Article on Medium