I'm curious to know your opinions on a situation that happened to me ten years ago, which continues to haunt me. The way I handled it was what seemed right for me at the time; but I'd like to know how many of you would have handled it differently, and how many would have handled it the same.
Living in the Washington, D.C. area, I occasionally go to cultural events at the French Embassy, which is on the outskirts of the Georgetown neighborhood. One day early in 2001, I read that a new French movie, Harry un ami qui vous veut du bien (2000) (known variously in English as With a Friend Like Harry . . . or Harry, He's Here to Help) was going to have its American premiere at the Embassy, with a personal appearance by a couple of its lead actors. (The Embassy was a ridiculous place to hold a premiere, by the way, since its film theater had no stereo sound, either analog or digital; and the only reason I went at all was that I assumed, wrongly, that there was no way they'd still be showing new films in mono in the year 2001.)
The film was a quite good neo-Hitchcockian suspense drama. It had four main characters, the least important of which--the girlfriend of the title character Harry--was played by a young French actress named Sophie Guillemin, who was one of the two cast members making an appearance at the Embassy. She would have been around 21 at the time of the filming, and was 23 at the time of the Embassy event. From the late nineties to the present, Sophie Guillemin has had a moderately successful career that's included some César (French Oscar) nominations, all of which I find incomprehensible, since she's a basically untrained actress who strikes me as having little in the way of talent or special charisma. The most striking thing about her is that she combines a very pretty face with a body that, while attractive, is almost shockingly zaftig for a French actress. There are plenty of pictures of her on the Internet, which you can check out to see what I mean.
Just to give a little psychological background on myself at the time of this incident, I'd been pretty much emotionally destroyed a few months earlier by getting a more or less definitive rejection from a French woman, who I'll call L., who was, and is, the love of my life; and I felt that since L. had in effect told me exactly how valueless I was in her eyes, there was no way I was going to bother being forbearing or kind to anybody myself either. I also wondered whether in the future I'd ever be capable of making any kind of other-than-sexual connection with a woman besides L., since the idea of being even the least bit flattering or romantic to another woman struck me as an obscene violation of the natural order of things. That is to say, even after being rejected by L., I was still feeling a desire to be romantically faithful to her, if you can believe that.
Anyway, as I watched Harry un ami qui vous veut du bien, it became clear to me that Sophie Guillemin's only real functions in it were to be a more or less personalityless partner to the character of Harry, and to supply some eye-candy. In the one shot that called for some heavy-duty acting from her, specifically requiring her to cry, she failed completely: obviously she hadn't been able to cry on cue when the scene was filmed, and so her head was turned away from the camera, the sound of her crying was obviously dubbed in, and when she did turn her face to the camera her eyes were completely white and dry. Now in my book, if you can't cry on cue, you don't deserve to be considered an actor at all, and so after that scene I basically wrote Sophie off as attractive but worthless.
In the question-and-answer session that followed the showing of the film, Sophie, speaking through a translator, actually managed to acquit herself rather well. Afterwards there was a reception, and while I was interested in DHV'ing by using my excellent French on some French babes, it never occurred to me that I might speak with Sophie, partly because I figured she'd be constantly surrounded by people, and partly because I knew I wouldn't be able to find a single good thing to say about her performance. But a few minutes into the reception, I realized that she was standing a few feet away from me, temporarily without anyone to talk to. (Maybe other people at the reception felt reluctant to talk to her for the same reasons I did.) So, making a spur-of-the-moment decision, I said to myself, "What the hell, I'll go over and talk with her". We started having a pleasant conversation in French--a conversation that I made sure stayed far away from the subject of her acting--and after a few minutes I realized, to my shock, that she was starting to give me the "doggy dinner bowl look". I guess something about my appearance, my manner, and my fluency in French had caught her interest, and I was starting to suspect she was thinking something might happen between the two of us outside of the reception. I thought to myself, "Can this actually be happening? Do I actually have a chance at fucking an actress from a major French film? How can I handle this? Would I actually be able to spend several hours with her without once letting on that I thought her performance sucked? What if she asks me what I think of her performance?" I managed to stay smiling and outwardly relaxed as I thought these panicked thoughts, though, and in the end I said to myself, "I can't go through with it; and anyway, I shouldn't monopolize her time at an event like this". So I politely started bringing things to a close, and then she spoke the last line in the conversation, which was, "À tout à l'heure". Which means "I'll see you shortly".
So she'd thrown down the gauntlet to me. Clearly she was thinking that we might both circulate and chat with others for a short time for appearance's sake, and then reconnect to do something together after the reception. But even with this encouragement from her, I just couldn't go through with it. My fear that she might expect me to compliment her on her acting, together with my post-dumping conviction that I couldn't bring myself to be gratuitously kind, let alone dishonestly kind, to anybody, were too much for me. So I talked for a short time with some other people, and just left.
From that day to this, I've been haunted by the thought that I might have made a bad decision, and that I pointlessly threw away a rare opportunity to fuck a woman whose sexiness had been validated by the power of cinema. Every time I see an actress cry on screen, I say to myself, "Sophie! If only you could have done that, I could have been your American boyfriend for a night!"
I know there was no right or wrong answer to this dilemma. But I'm curious to know what some of you would have done.
Living in the Washington, D.C. area, I occasionally go to cultural events at the French Embassy, which is on the outskirts of the Georgetown neighborhood. One day early in 2001, I read that a new French movie, Harry un ami qui vous veut du bien (2000) (known variously in English as With a Friend Like Harry . . . or Harry, He's Here to Help) was going to have its American premiere at the Embassy, with a personal appearance by a couple of its lead actors. (The Embassy was a ridiculous place to hold a premiere, by the way, since its film theater had no stereo sound, either analog or digital; and the only reason I went at all was that I assumed, wrongly, that there was no way they'd still be showing new films in mono in the year 2001.)
The film was a quite good neo-Hitchcockian suspense drama. It had four main characters, the least important of which--the girlfriend of the title character Harry--was played by a young French actress named Sophie Guillemin, who was one of the two cast members making an appearance at the Embassy. She would have been around 21 at the time of the filming, and was 23 at the time of the Embassy event. From the late nineties to the present, Sophie Guillemin has had a moderately successful career that's included some César (French Oscar) nominations, all of which I find incomprehensible, since she's a basically untrained actress who strikes me as having little in the way of talent or special charisma. The most striking thing about her is that she combines a very pretty face with a body that, while attractive, is almost shockingly zaftig for a French actress. There are plenty of pictures of her on the Internet, which you can check out to see what I mean.
Just to give a little psychological background on myself at the time of this incident, I'd been pretty much emotionally destroyed a few months earlier by getting a more or less definitive rejection from a French woman, who I'll call L., who was, and is, the love of my life; and I felt that since L. had in effect told me exactly how valueless I was in her eyes, there was no way I was going to bother being forbearing or kind to anybody myself either. I also wondered whether in the future I'd ever be capable of making any kind of other-than-sexual connection with a woman besides L., since the idea of being even the least bit flattering or romantic to another woman struck me as an obscene violation of the natural order of things. That is to say, even after being rejected by L., I was still feeling a desire to be romantically faithful to her, if you can believe that.
Anyway, as I watched Harry un ami qui vous veut du bien, it became clear to me that Sophie Guillemin's only real functions in it were to be a more or less personalityless partner to the character of Harry, and to supply some eye-candy. In the one shot that called for some heavy-duty acting from her, specifically requiring her to cry, she failed completely: obviously she hadn't been able to cry on cue when the scene was filmed, and so her head was turned away from the camera, the sound of her crying was obviously dubbed in, and when she did turn her face to the camera her eyes were completely white and dry. Now in my book, if you can't cry on cue, you don't deserve to be considered an actor at all, and so after that scene I basically wrote Sophie off as attractive but worthless.
In the question-and-answer session that followed the showing of the film, Sophie, speaking through a translator, actually managed to acquit herself rather well. Afterwards there was a reception, and while I was interested in DHV'ing by using my excellent French on some French babes, it never occurred to me that I might speak with Sophie, partly because I figured she'd be constantly surrounded by people, and partly because I knew I wouldn't be able to find a single good thing to say about her performance. But a few minutes into the reception, I realized that she was standing a few feet away from me, temporarily without anyone to talk to. (Maybe other people at the reception felt reluctant to talk to her for the same reasons I did.) So, making a spur-of-the-moment decision, I said to myself, "What the hell, I'll go over and talk with her". We started having a pleasant conversation in French--a conversation that I made sure stayed far away from the subject of her acting--and after a few minutes I realized, to my shock, that she was starting to give me the "doggy dinner bowl look". I guess something about my appearance, my manner, and my fluency in French had caught her interest, and I was starting to suspect she was thinking something might happen between the two of us outside of the reception. I thought to myself, "Can this actually be happening? Do I actually have a chance at fucking an actress from a major French film? How can I handle this? Would I actually be able to spend several hours with her without once letting on that I thought her performance sucked? What if she asks me what I think of her performance?" I managed to stay smiling and outwardly relaxed as I thought these panicked thoughts, though, and in the end I said to myself, "I can't go through with it; and anyway, I shouldn't monopolize her time at an event like this". So I politely started bringing things to a close, and then she spoke the last line in the conversation, which was, "À tout à l'heure". Which means "I'll see you shortly".
So she'd thrown down the gauntlet to me. Clearly she was thinking that we might both circulate and chat with others for a short time for appearance's sake, and then reconnect to do something together after the reception. But even with this encouragement from her, I just couldn't go through with it. My fear that she might expect me to compliment her on her acting, together with my post-dumping conviction that I couldn't bring myself to be gratuitously kind, let alone dishonestly kind, to anybody, were too much for me. So I talked for a short time with some other people, and just left.
From that day to this, I've been haunted by the thought that I might have made a bad decision, and that I pointlessly threw away a rare opportunity to fuck a woman whose sexiness had been validated by the power of cinema. Every time I see an actress cry on screen, I say to myself, "Sophie! If only you could have done that, I could have been your American boyfriend for a night!"
I know there was no right or wrong answer to this dilemma. But I'm curious to know what some of you would have done.