Not Hot Heat

Last Saturday marked the arrival of a cold in my life. The worst kind. A cold that makes you wonder if there's a garbage dump truck with too much exhaust rolling down your throat and dropping some baggage along the way. I have been sick all week, but it didn't prevent me from going out on Monday and getting way too drunk to remember everything that happened. I also got to bed very late every night, watched a few movies, and tried to keep up. On my Thursday off, after writing for a few hours & drinking coffee, I went biking around, went to Bender's place to listen to his latest tracks - some of them have been signed to Oliver Huntemann's label Confused - and went to eat burgers at Miss Bijoux'.

I was supposed to have a few beers with some friends later on, and the Drunk Rocker showed up earlier so we could down a few Sapporos. We slowly got drunk, and in between conversations about Lucie Laurier, Nelly Arcan and other uninteresting topics, something seems to have snapped somewhere. Was it a rattle in the air, or the mucus in my brain ? The gin or the beer ? The twelve million things I did and didn't do during the previous days ? I was deep in the middle of a cold, perhaps thinking I was living its final stage, an impression forced on me by the booze I was massively absorbing. My cold was perhaps due to the 30 rainy days in April where I biked to work. When I curse against the shitty weather, it's about its logical consequences that I think; besides the bad drivers you have to watch out for with your bike breaks not working when they're wet, you also have to consider that being soaked from head to toe by COLD water, and then exposed to a strong COLD wind, has to have an effect sometime, somewhere.



So about the snap. Did I become a different person that evening ? I don't think so. Was the way some people perceive me changed forever ? No doubt. Because Miss Bijoux got really angry, or something, and since she's in Toronto until the wee hours of Monday, I can't really ask her what's up. She suggested I should "grow up" in an email she sent me, around 3 AM that night. We are no longer a couple but I cherish her with all my heart and I really don't like doing something harmful to her, even when I don't even realise it.

When we left her place, we were joined by Kardec, and headed for the Bistrot de Paris. It's central, well situated, and sparsely attended. It's an old school tavern, with Video-Poker machines in the back and drunks at the bar. When we got there, there was a lady sleeping on the counter and I ordered a big Labatt 50 bottle. This is something we seemingly have lost - big beer bottles cannot easily be found in modern Montreal watering holes. I told the guy at the bar : "Just like in the good old days of La Vieille 300."

[Flashback : In 2001, back when the old S.A.T. was located on Ste-Catherine, in an old bank building in front of the Spectrum, there was always a line-up for the events we were going to, because the doors rarely opened on time. And you probably know that waiting in line with THE THIRST is quite boring. So we slowly started going to the Vieille 300, a tevern located just in front, sitting near the front window and drinking big beer bottles. When the line-up started moving, we would cross the street again, slightly drunk, and resume the partying in a "trendier" setting. The place, however, was so laidback that we started going there even when nothing was going on at the S.A.T. - basically every time we wanted to drink cheap beer and talk. The Saturday night waiter started remembering our faces, and one Saturday we were with a few girlies and it was closing time. The time had flown without us noticing. So the waiter came to see us and said : "Just so you know, it's 3:20. I don't mind you staying here longer but you'll have to move to the back and roll me a joint". We stayed there until about 6 AM and he paid for all the beer we drank. I was probably too intoxicated to notice but the next morning I found out that I hadn't spent much. I also took home quite a babe, but that's another story.

One day I was walking in front of the tavern when the waiter came out running, calling my name. He hadn't seen me in a while and wanted to know what was up. I told him that pretty fuckin' soon we'd do an "afterhours" again. When I went to have a beer with a friend a few months later, my friend wasn't there. The current waiter told me he had left. A few years later, my two friends Brigitte & Jacynthe were celebrating their 33th birthday and were doing it at the Bistrot. They asked me to DJ so I went there in the afternoon to hook up my turntables. The owner & I were looking at each other for a while, and at one point I realised that he was my Saturday night waiter. End of flashback]

That's when he recognised me. The rest of the night was pretty fun, but around 2 AM Kardec was ready for something else. He got us guest lists for the Peer Pressure showcase at Lambi, where Flosstradamus were putting the party in the place. On the way to the club we ran into Bruce Benson, who was text messaging in front of Salon Daomé. We chatted for a while and then climber the stairs of Lambi, where everybody was tightly packed. This place easily gets hot, and the chicks were also pretty hot themselves. But perhaps a little young. We drank only one beer and got out. It was over anyway. Downstairs we were chatting with the flyer girls, and the Drunk Rocker told me he was going home. A few minutes later I saw Kardec getting out and he proposed we go to his place to drink Chartreuse & listen to a few of his latest tracks.



Little did I know I would be there until 7:30, going through his record shelves quite drunk. When I jumped back on my bike after leaving, it was so sunny that I didn't want to go home. I just cruised the streets, puzzled by the view of a few people walking to work.

*

My Chabrol of the week was LES BONNES FEMMES, a 1960 black & white shot classic. I logically wanted to see, after A DOUBLE TOUR (1959) the week before, what the follow-up would be. Chabrol is known for many things, and the three main characteristics of his movies are an hitchcockian eye, an obsession with upper class social mechanics, and beautiful women. The movie we're discussing today proposes two of the latter, focusing this time on a group of small time saleswomen and what they do for fun.



The movie begins with two of the girls, Jane (Bernadette Lafont) and Jacqueline (Clotilde Joano), being picked up by two partying womanisers for a meal and a grand tour of some nightclubs. Jacqueline saves herself for a man she'll truly love, and soon gets tired of the two guys' manners, and leaves. Jane has a boyfriend in the army, but she's somewhat easy and ends up following the men home and being tricked into a threesome. She gets home at dawn and wakes her roommate Ginette (Stéphane Audran). The next day, they go back to work where life goes on...



What we're faced with here is the quiet life of a few "modern" - for 1960 - parisian girls, where they dream out loud about passionnate love and walk around town looking for something to do. Men are presented here as a menace, and even those who, at first glance, seem innocent... are not. Chabrol takes us around some clubs and restaurants, people eat a lot, and we even get to visit the zoo. It's everyday life until the very end, where the tone shifts. The innocence is gone, the fantasy fades to be brutally replaced by a grim reality, and it concludes on an enigmatic note.



Claude Berri plays Jane's soldier boyfriend, in an early role. The two most breath taking presences in the movie are, of course, Clotilde Joano and Bernadette Lafont. Joano would play in another Chabrol, LES NOCES ROUGES, in 1973, and also appeared in Bertrand Tavernier's L'HORLOGER DE SAINT-PAUL in 1974 shortly before her death. Her beauty is gracious and tragic, and her soft eyes are immensely lovely. [She died in 1974 for reasons I could not find out. If anybody knows, please share the info with me...] Lafont is no stranger to beauty, and her right on portrayal of an easy-going girl with low morals does not for one moment take away her enormous charm. LES BONNES FEMMES is the kind of movie in which you fall in love with at least one of the girls, wether you're nostalgic or not about this long-lost era.