La Moreau

Today me and "T" took ourselves to the Angelika Theatre to cool off and see Francois Ozon's "Time To Leave" which is about a young gay French photographer who is sucessful, spoiled and not very nice and is diagnosed with terminal cancer (is there any other kind?) and except for telling his grandmother keeps his sad fate to himself. The film was so-so with a few good moments but it had too many contrivances and was ultimately an unmoving experience. I did appreciate seeing a movie about a gay man (so did "T" even though he is "straight") that wasn't silly, sterotypical or teasingly sexual. Anyway the grandmother was played by the great Jeanne Moreau who I have adored for years. I once had a book signed by her but sold it which is sometimes the part of being a bookseller that I don't like, you have to part with some gems that you would much rather keep. I once ended a friendship with someone because he thought that Jeanne Moreau was just "okay." This he announced one hot sunday a few years back as me "R" and Andy walked along Christopher Street in New York's Greenwich Village. Me & "R" stopped dead in our tracks and laughed which Andy did not appreciate at all. "WHAT" I said "Just Okay" "Listen Andy Julia Roberts is just okay,Gwyneth Paltrow is just okay, but Moreau just okay?? Andy was pretty quiet for the rest of the afternoon as I sulked and quietly fummed. There was no way that I could be friends with him after this terrible lapse of taste or ever have a serious conversation with him about movies or acting after this insult to the mother of The New Wave. As "T" said to me after the movie this afternoon "don't you wish you had Jeanne Moreau for a grandmother." How beautiful she still is wrinkles and all and how great that she is still making movies for us and aging with grace and dignity. I never spoke to Andy again after that sunday afternoon.