JULIETTE BINOCHE (2016)
I WILL PREVIVE [The Book Of Rocks] diary extract, 8 November 2016
AND GOD CREATED FRENCH WOMAN series (2016)
“A Sunday driver sortie to a Yarra Valley chocaleterie only made me think of one woman: oui, “La Binoche”, Juliette Binoche, not “Juliette Brioche” as Dad ever so hilariously called her. More Dad jokes. There is definitely a whiff of Julia Roberts about her and she also looks a little bit like my former French school teacher. She has acted in no less than 60 films and plays the warm and sugary seductress, Vianne, in the film, Chocolat, where she opens a small chocolaterie just as the 40 days of Lent begin. Slowly, the repressed villagers come to love both her and her chocolates, as she changes their lives through the appreciation of life’s smallest pleasures. After all, this approach to the daily grind is what the French are best known for, isn’t it?
I’m pretty certain that we all have such pleasures and turn to them often. I know that my good friends, wine AND chocolate, help me through the week (not daily!) and now I have a drawing obsession, too. There is a kind of security in these things which seems so hard to give up because of the good feeling and comfort they bring. It’s difficult to break both good and bad habits once we start them. It’s true that we are all creatures of habit; if you watch people you will see them do the same things at the same time, and sometimes it’s not even conscious! I guess you could call these the little rituals which help us to find our place in the world.
My chocolate tinged wine for tonight is Safe and Sound by Justice to toast tous les petits plaisirs.”