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Note to Emily: Ditch Mindy for a French Friend!
Everyone seems to be bingeing on Emily in Paris — the adventures of a clueless but adorable twentysomething who doesn’t know the language or understand the French. Reviewers love to point out its stereotypes, its clichés, and all the moments that would never happen in real life if an American social media whiz went to work for a French corporation. But as someone who spent eleven years in and out of Paris — and who will return to live there in the next few months — I identify.
I found Paris beautiful and daunting, among other reasons (I’m a little embarrassed to admit) because it was filled with French people, not New Yorkers. I complained as much as I complimented. Like New York Times reporter Elaine Sciolino describing her “complicated dance” with the City, I also “received a bumpy education in what it means to be French” and am “still learning.” Thus, I, too, find many “grains of truth” in Emily in Paris.
Like Emily, I have blithely smiled my way through the city and committed one faux pas after another.
“Monsieur, s’il vous plait,” I politely ask a bus driver when I get lost. “Où est l’arrêt pour le soixante-neuf?”
Without missing a beat or bothering to correct my flawed French, his response is, “Bonjour, Madame” (emphasis on the “hello” — the French never initiate conversation without a proper greeting).
I stand corrected. But, like the fictional Epaminondas, who never quite gets the lesson right, at my next visit to our neighborhood fromagerie, I extend my hand to the owner, offer a polite “Bonjour, Monsieur,” but foolishly follow it with, “Je m’appelle Melinda. Et vous?”
My new acquaintance replies haltingly and nervously, as if he’s at gunpoint and I’ve asked for his pin number, not his first name: “Je… m’appelle… Pascal.”
My partner was of little help in such matters. A non-American diplomat living full-time in Paris, she was appalled and often scolded me: “You never call a shopkeeper by his first name. You never complain about your meal in a restaurant or — God forbid! — send it back. And stop smiling at everyone. The French will think you want something.”
True enough, when I say, “Je m’appelle Melinda” to the oyster guy on Rue Cler, he tells me he’s…
