Funny Face

from the archive (March 2021)

I arrive in Paris with perfect German. 

Short Bio of Audrey Hepburn: Hunger, Hitler, Ballet. The Secret Garden. Pippin, the deer. Dark German bread for breakfast; fingers of whisky at night. Her apple trees in rainy Vaud: 60 fags a day. How she spoke like the letter ‘T’ might: plosively.

I text my father to post my VHS copy of Funny Face. I tell him I passed La Maison Rose in Montmartre where they shot the dance scene. My father says he caddied for Fred Astaire on a stag weekend in the 1950s. He doesn’t remember a word he said. 

Short Bio of Fred Astaire: Shooting, Shouting, Shimmying.

The copy is from a box set. On the cover of Funny Face is a still from the film, Sabrina and on its reverse: NOT TO BE SOLD SEPARATELY. Sabrina teaches Bogart how to say ‘my sister has a yellow pencil’ in French. Meine Schwester hat einen gelben Stift. 

Jo Stockton, played by Audrey, has an imperfect grip on the concept of empathy, which takes its second root from the German word, Einfühlung. In Embryo Concepts bookshop, where she works: Let go. Let go of my arm…you should be ashamed of yourself. 

In my apartment block, there’s a man who claps at 19.57 every night. One evening, I forget to draw the curtains and he catches me not clapping. I put on my headphones and dance. He is still clapping when my song finishes.

Most people think they’re beautiful dresses on beautiful women…you’d be amazed how small the demand is for pictures of trees says Dick Avery, played by Astaire, who also has an imperfect grip on the concept of empathy. I put myself in your place and…

All the musicians are in their rooms. A cellist plays the usual cello fayre, then a third song I don’t know. I think of slipping a note under her door to ask. I hum it over the phone to a friend but can’t grip the tune. It sounds nothing like that, my friend says.

La poétique de l’espace by Gaston Bachelard is released the same year as Funny Face:  “Rilke wrote these trees are magnificent, but even more magnificent is the sublime and moving space between them, as though with their growth it too increased”. 

I follow the arrows in the bakery. The lady corrects my order. You can’t have two, you can have six or ten! She is sweating and when I go to a different bakery the next morning, she is there in the same spot as I pass, still shouting. I hide my baguette.  

We’ll have to drug her to get her to Paris…the body’s good…the bones are good… ladies, feast your eyes on our Quality Woman… They arrive in Paris with perfect English. I for one am exhausted. I know how you feel. I’m trying to think in French. Allo.

I google how far La Maison Rose is from my house: 3km. We’re currently on a 1km limit. I’m so agitated from being inside, I walk there anyway and am fined €175 at the base of the Sacre Coeur.

I ask the gendarmes can I walk home past the café where they shot some dance scenes in Funny Face, except I don’t say that…I say that that I came for a walk because I’m sick, he says the sick must stay inside, I say not that kind of sick, triste.

Pull it out!

Wet your lips! 

I don’t want to stop. I like it. Take the picture, take the picture!

I start to buy things I’ll never cook—fennel, courgettes, red cabbage. I build a fence of half-eaten gherkin jars across the top shelf of the fridge to conceal the vegetables until I can see them rotting through the glass. There is no smell. 

This is not my dress.

I make a list of verbs I remember from working in clothing stores:

Folding

Tucking

Zipping

Hanging

Clipping

Fibbing

Fawning

These are not my clothes.

Don’t listen to her, Master. She is but a child.

And you’re still here?

Jacquemus has his fashion show in barley fields outside Paris. I pass a shop with a silver dress in the window. I tell my friend I’m going to take a picture of it every day for as long as we’re confined. I  will say fashion is frozen and is a record of time.

I love Paris.

The silver dress isn’t ugly or beautiful. Because it’s neither, I abandon the photograph project. I buy herbs in Monoprix for the apartment. In the supermarket, there’s a man shopping carrying a full set of golf clubs. I infuse gin with rosemary.

I ruminate about watching Funny Face again. Maybe I could put black tape on the top half of the screen so I can write about their legs, about dancing? Funny Faceless or maybe something like that I can call it. Ask what was it like to dance with Audrey?

I know how you feel, even if you think I don’t.

She was here a little while ago, but she’s disappeared.

She put herself in your place, all you have to do is put yourself in her…

I rewind the video; I forget about the black tape. Jo hasn’t appeared yet. She must be in the bookstore. Maybe a new order of books just arrived or she’s helping a difficult customer, whose presence or absence makes no difference.  

I clap.

Postscript: I wrote this a year after moving to the 17th arrondissement in Paris. The pandemic was in full swing. Thank you for reading.