#4th arrondissement

[sleepydrummer]

Centre Georges Pompidou Beaubourg, Paris 

Claude Falguière

[hedgehog-moss]

Some news that made me smile today

1. There was a funny article in Le Monde about French people's existential questions as to what to do with their trash in these times of garbage collectors' strikes (in various cities not just Paris). Some started storing their trash on their balcony so there wouldn't be so much in the streets, then started feeling embarrassed because now all your neighbours know you're a class traitor. True enemies of the reform divide their trash into several bags to make the piles in the streets more imposing. "They're asking their friends what their strategy is, talking about their trash bags like they're ballots." The article quotes people as saying: "My gesture of support for the revolution: putting my trash bags outside so they've got something to burn." "I'm thinking of putting my trash in the boot of my car and driving up to Paris to add it there."

The strike has been going on long enough that more complex reflections are arising: "why are we piling the trash on the pavement, bothering pedestrians, rather than putting it in the middle of the road to bother cars?" Also some people are driving their trash around to go put it in the streets of the strike-breaking districts where trash is being removed by private companies. The commitment. The conclusion of the article is that people who don't close their trash bags properly "cannot be said to be doing this out of any political strategising" and should stop doing that.

2. The garbage collectors' strike in Paris was due to end tomorrow (I think) and I was wondering if they would be able to extend it, and I just learnt that garbage collectors in the private sector are taking up the torch, they'll be on strike starting tonight. They handle different arrondissements of Paris—the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 10th and 18th. No big deal, just the Louvre, the Palais Royal, Rue de Rivoli, Montmartre.

3. I'm late for this one but some football fans attending the France-Netherlands match at the Stade de France in Paris chanted "Macron démission" at the 49min3s mark... Apparently they had organised it because Macron was supposed to be present for the match, but he wussed out cancelled at the last minute.

4. Our ministers are cancelling things too—they've been told to "postpone all non-imperative official visits" within the country because Macron's finally running out of cops I guess and if you send them to protect ministers you won't have enough to intimidate Parisians. The Minister of Labour is quoted as saying "our security forces are exhausted." So it seems we've grounded our government for the time being.

[hopefulkidshark]

The Place des Vosges, originally the Place Royale, is the oldest planned square in Paris, France. It is located in the Marais district, and it straddles the dividing-line between the 3rd and 4th arrondissements of Paris. Wikipedia

[mariacallous]

For years, you could find pletzl, a flatbread topped with raw or caramelized onions and poppy seeds, sold alongside bagels and bialys at Jewish bakeries along the East Coast. Pletzl was brought to the U.S. by Polish, Lithuanian and Ukrainian Jews in the mid-20th century, but the bread never seemed to capture the American palette the way bagels have, and it slowly faded into semi-obscurity.

Pletzl (aka onion board or platzel) is typically made from flour, yeast, oil, salt and water. In “The Encyclopedia of Jewish Food,” Gil Marks explains how this bread, the texture of which can be thin like a cracker or light and airy with a more focaccia-esque crumb, gained popularity in the 19th century, as Eastern European Jews gained access to modern milling equipment and techniques that allowed them to move beyond the rye bread they were accustomed to and toward lighter flatbreads.

Pletzel’s exact origins are unclear, but we can fairly reliably connect them to their successors, bialys, which Mimi Sheraton, food critic and author of “The Bialy Eaters,” theorizes was born from a pletzel gone rogue: 

“My theory is that a pletzel, having been formed but not baked, fell on the floor and somebody stepped on it with the heel going into the center, and being frugal decided to bake it anyway and see what happened. And so, the bialy was born.”

Linguistically, Marks connects pletzl to German plätzchen (crackers). He also notes that the origin of the term “onion board” is likely due to the fact that the flatbread would’ve been formed on a baking board, known in Yiddish as a lokshen bretl. Bretl, Marks suggests, sounds similar to pletzel.

You can still find this tragically underrated bread — if you know where to look. These days, rather than the traditional oblong shape formed on a baking board, some bakeries sell pletzlach as rolls or discs, which more closely resemble the bialy. Kossar’s Bagels and Bialys in New York sells an almost pizza-like circular version, which, thanks to the miracles of same-day shipping, is available to order via Goldbelly.

The Yiddish word “pletzl” means ‘little place,” and it’s also the former name of the Jewish quarter in the 4th arrondissement of Paris. There, on Rue de Écouffes, Florence Kahn sells a pletzel sandwich from her eponymous bakery. Though traditionally pletzel were served whole with a schmear of cream cheese or chopped liver on top, Khan cuts hers down the middle to make a sandwich, filled with pastrami, turkey or corned beef, topped with a variety of vegetables.  Following suit, Joe Baur uses pletzl to play on the Iraqi-Israeli sabich sandwich, with silky eggplant and flavorful amba. 

Pletzl is simple to make at home. Like many historical recipes, there are plenty of discrepancies. “There are at least eighteen or so varieties of pletzl,” Marks writes. “The most famous one is topped with the principal Ashkenazic seasoning, onions (tzibele); it is known as tzibele pletzl; tzibele zemmel, tzibele papalik, and simply pletzl.” There are also sweet pletzels without onions. 

While Kahn’s pletzl dough is enriched with eggs and sugar, Leah Koenig’s recipe in “Modern Jewish Cooking” (as well as my recipe below) omits egg in the dough and tops the flatbread with pre-cooked onions. More than the dough itself, it’s the ease of cooking that seems to be a common thread among pletzls. Whether you whip up a quick dough of flour, yeast, salt and water or use a big pinch of your Shabbat challah dough, the idea is the same.

Note: Bread will last for 2-3 days in an airtight container on the counter.

[miraculousfrenchculture]

Hi, I'm wondering if there's an equivalent to Chinatown in France and if it is possible for characters to travel there on foot or bike from either the school or from Marinette's bakery/house

And does that area celebrate the Lunar New Years, Lantern Festival and other generally non-Western Celebrations?

And are students allowed to get time off from school to celebrate non-Western holidays?

Hi!

There is indeed an equivalent to Chinatown right in Paris, in the 13th arrondissement. Its other name is "le quartier chinois" (Chinese neighborhood)! You can find the most specialised Asian markets and shops there, like the famous Tang Frères, and it has Asian-inspired architecture. Shop names are at least in Chinese!

It would definitely be possible for the characters to walk, bike, or even take public transport to get there (it would respectively take ~45min, ~20, and ~25 minutes, if we take the real location of the Place des Vosges, so the Park that's next to Marinette's and the school, as a starting point).

The biggest Lunar New Year and Lantern Festival celebrations in Paris are held there. Students would not have time off to celebrate these holidays, but they could probably catch the parades after a day of class! There are also some Lunar New Year parades held closer to where the show is set, in the 4th arrondissement, which would be quicker to get to for them.

Hope it helps!

[digitalfashionmuseum]

Oil Painting, 1795, French.

By Jean-Louis Laneuville.

Portraying Jules-François Paré, presient of the tribunal of the 4th arrondissent, in a green coat and white cravat.

Musée Carnavalet.

[uths-ethnol-spam]

i've listened to MAG 158-159-160 in a perfect setting and just want to talk a bit about it

tw: animal death (rat) and a disturbing thing about it (it's the paragraph following me talking about mag 160 if you want to skip it, it really is not relevant)

spoilers for TMA season 4 finale

my experience listening to tma, there you go

i currently live in Paris. the autumn here lets the sinuous paved streets gleaming after the rain; the night falls early, and you quickly happen to walk under the yellow light of old street lamps, their glow slightly dimed by fog; when you know where to go, some places are almost devoid of people — and the cars are very rare. the sounds are mostly the Seine, the Canal Saint-Martin, your feet on the pavement, the wind, distant sounds from the city filtered by your headphones.

so i was walking in the 4th arrondissement, between Pont Marie, Sully Morland and l'île Saint-Louis, crossing some bridges, drinking hot tea as Martin dropped his actual first f-bomb, as Basira promised Daisy to kill her — and just couldn't stop wandering, as Jon entered the Lonely, searched for Martin, forced a statement out of Peter Lukas

(something funny did happened. i, well, gasped — really gasped — when Martin said “i really loved you”, but just had crossed path with a man, who turned back and stared at me, clearly concerned, and oh what a story like tma made me do)

(i told him “oh, pardon, c'est rien, désolé” and simply walked away)

then, mag 160; finally, i knew what the cows were about, why the sentence "hello Jon, apologies for the deception" is indeed iconic, and and i just fell into Jonah's clutches throughout his whole monologue.

when he was explaining the whole plan, i happened to walk on the corpse of a dead rat; they are not quite unusual here, though myself do not see rats often, actually; it was so bizarre, to feel its softness, and i did have an immediate body reaction, a shudder, and was a bit lightheaded right after; but it was thematically fitting. besides, it just reinforced the impression that it was just me, the town, and Jonah Magnus. a very... intimate journey, somehow

and then. well, the end (... no pun intended) happened. oh fuck. i had almost reach the Hôtel de Ville, and from where i was (les quais de Seine) i could see the very end of l'île Saint-Louis, where i was half an hour before, listening to Peter Lukas' statement; from there, you actually have a large view — you see all the sky. and oh. i actually stopped walking, and just stared. and it was brilliant

really, i don't think i could have had a better experience (besides, i don't walk enough these days, and doing so in Paris is always a good idea because the city is so cool)

anyway, i just wanted to talk about it, put it somewhere, because it was sick bordel vraiment incroyable, and it's great to commit it to memory

(there are. so, so, so much things at the end of the season. it is a very strong finale, probably my favourite, and i can't wait to finally listen to s5, though i do not want their story to end and leave them behind) (i won't, but... you know how it is)

[artemiseamoon]

Preview: Go Slow

Sierra Six / Court x Puma

Pairing from Behind the Mask | this can be read as a flashback scene for the fic, it expands upon something mentioned in the prologue.

Whumpril 2023 masterlist | day 22

Prompts: sponge bath, infection, let’s get you cleaned up

Below is a preview * read in full on A03

With much effort, Sierra Six moved through the streets, using darkness and alleys for cover as he made his way to the 4th arrondissement. The one upside of his enemies dragging this fight to Paris was Puma, who he knows still lives here.

When the sons of bitches went after him, though he knew he could handle it, he thought about warning her, just in case they wanted to use her to get to him. Six made an effort to hide that he trusted her and that they were close so his enemies wouldn’t have an easy way to get to him, not that she couldn’t defend herself. Still, he rather she not end up in any trouble because of him.

Now that every single fucker on the wet team was dead, and anyway for them to correspond with the man who hired them, also dead, it was safe to go to her, if he could make it. Despite being a careful, trained, and strategic fighter there were certain things he couldn’t avoid, like injuries and blood loss, especially if the guy on the other end of the fight was any good.

His latest enemy sent a team of 4, then a team of 6, then one of 10 after him. Within the last 4 days, he’s sustained a nasty knife wound to the left thigh, which never got a chance to heal before being torn open again, a broken rib, a dislocated shoulder which he popped back in place, and some other injuries, the worst of it being the gunshot to his right arm, a new deep knife wound to his right leg and the one to his side; all of which were bleeding like a mother fucker.

Though Six is trained in battlefield medicine, he didn’t have anything he needed to get himself in semi-decent shape, not slouched up against a wall, woozy, and in enough pain to bite his own tongue off. His energy was quickly draining and when he pushed the dead man off of him, it felt like moving a damn car.

Read on A03

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[ortodelmondo]

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Leap of Faith

PHOTOS (left to right):⁠ ⁠ (1) Saut d’eau. Haiti. 2001. © Cristina García Rodero / Magnum Photos ⁠ ⁠ (2) The duality of Exu, lighting the way and his devilish connotations. Brazil. 2016. © @lademiddel / Magnum Photos ⁠& @brujomorais ⁠ (3) Students of the Al Azhar college attend Friday prayer in the auditorium, transformed into a mosque for the occasion. Jakarta. Indonesia. 1989. @abbas.photos / Magnum Photos ⁠ ⁠ (4) Zhengzhou. China. 2004. © @stevemccurryofficial / Magnum Photos ⁠ ⁠ (5) The Great Passion Play. Bible Land. Eureka Springs. USA. 1992. © @carldekeyzer / Magnum Photos ⁠ ⁠ (6) From the series, Agony in the Garden. Spain. 2022. © @lua_ribeira / Magnum Photos ⁠ ⁠ (7) A cow and deities on the banks of the Hooghly River. Kolkata. India. 1987. © @raghurai.official / Magnum Photos ⁠ ⁠ (8) A member of the Ramnami sect, a group of untouchables in central India whose tattoos represent a unique protest against the oppression of the caste-system. Chhattisgargh. India. 2005. © @oliviarthur / Magnum Photos ⁠ ⁠ (9) From the series, Hafiz: Guardians of the Qur'an. Havva lies in the sickroom at a Qur’an school, listening to music while apparently feigning illness. Istanbul. Turkey. 2017. © @sabakhayr / Magnum Photos ⁠ ⁠ (10) 4th arrondissement. Rue des Rosiers. Orthodox Jews in prayer. Paris. France. 1979. © Patrick @pzachmann / Magnum Photos

[eclecticharmonytimemachine]

Guy Le Querrec - Paris. 1975. 4th arrondissement. Rue Saint-Antoine."La Bière" Restaurant. 05/03 Party after the demonstration.

[myworldpassport]

Notre dame Paris

📸 April 2012 Paris, France 🇫🇷

A beautiful medieval Catholic cathedral in the 4th Arrondissement of Paris dedicated to the Virgin Mary ✝️

[atotaltaitaitale]

.

Wednesday Wanderings and Wonderings - Walking Distance from our Domicile.

Tour saint Jacques. Another landmark just around the corner from our place.

Summary facts:

UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1998.

The tower is all that remains of the former 16th-century Church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie demolished during the French Revolution.

The tower welcomed pilgrims setting out on the road that led to Tours and headed for the Way of St James, which led to the major pilgrimage destination of Santiago de Compostela.

A statue of Blaise Pascal is located at the base of the tower, commemorating the experiments on atmospheric pressure.

The Tour Saint-Jacques ('Saint James's Tower') is a monument located in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, France, at the intersection of Rue de Rivoli with Rue Nicolas Flamel. This 52-metre (171 ft) Flamboyant Gothic tower is all that remains of the former 16th-century Church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie ("Saint James of the butchers"), which was demolished in 1797, during the French Revolution, leaving only the tower.

With a dedication to Saint James the Greater, the ancient church and its landmark tower welcomed pilgrims setting out on the road that led to Tours and headed for the Way of St James, which led to the major pilgrimage destination of Santiago de Compostela. A relic of the saint preserved in the church linked it the more strongly and in modern times occasioned its listing in 1998 as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO among the sites and structures marking the chemins de Compostelle, the pilgrimage routes in France that led like tributaries of a great stream headed towards Santiago in the northwest of Spain.

A statue of Blaise Pascal is located at the base of the tower, commemorating the experiments on atmospheric pressure, though it is debated whether they were performed here or at the church of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas. A meteorological laboratory is also installed at the top of the tower.

[theressomethinghappeninginparis]

Okay, a lot of stuff happened and I'm currently thinking of residing in a hostel or something so I don't have to travel here again. I visited the places I found important on my map and gathered some information on anything I could get my hands on.

Transcript of the first page: Pawn Shop: Nothing. It was closed although the opening hours said it should be open. I will ask around if anyone knows the owner and will come back later, maybe they are on a coffe break. Serpent Rouge: The club's dead like anything in this, pardon me, shithole. They have a front entry that's locked and a back door with a glass window that I could technically smash in. To ass to my criminal record. There was also a lady called Janice that mentioned another woman inquiring her about the happenings and I tookt he bait as she suggested I worked with her...okay, I lied, but listen, it would benefit us all. I got some information on the other woman's tasks: she wanted to find a guy named Bouchard(?) and she should stay away from him. From what I know and what the murmurs in Paris are saying, Bouchard is a drug dealer and shady as well. What I would want from him, who knows.

Transcript of the second page: Herbalist: I need a new pen and I spent a fortune on this herbalist. I paid for some tea, asked him things, paid for paracetamol, asked him another, back and forth. What I got out of him is that I should stay home and not snoop around, that most people are bribable but him, the healing balms really stops bleeings and if I have some business here I should ask Bernand(?) and not him. Who the fuck is Bernand and why is everyone so secretive around here?

Transcript of the third page: Park: I met an old man feding birds there. No idea who he is, I also did not ask, but I mentioned the murder of Carvier here and if he knew anything about it. He explained he keeps low since his friend Arnould(?) was attacked by something or someone and he assumes it was the monstrum, and people are asking him a lot these days. The lady inquiring Janice earlier, does he mean her? Chruch: The church isn't one anymore, it's the base of a legal boxing club. The guy working there as a referee I think likes gold and was thick, and intimidating and he wasn't talking too much. So I didn't expect a nice answer, left in one piece, and as I asked him about Bouchard, he said I shouldn't go further if I want to see the next day. Cool!

Transcript of the fourth page: Café Metro: The 4th arrondissement of Paris is flooded in trash I swear. It's dirty, neglected, most houses are abandoned and the café looks like a place you'd stay if you lost all money and dignity. It's also collecting rust at the front door and old papers in beneath it. There was one customer reading newspapers in the corner, old wine and the bartender was semi happy. After he told me I was nosy and I was asking around like another person today I tried offering him something. I tried it with painkillers but he suggested something I could help him with. And he gave me a plan! Can you believe this shit. He hands me a scrap of paper and wants me to solve his "problem". Don't ask me why I agreed.

Transcript of the fifth page: The problem is as follows: there is a trinket in the Serpent Rouge in the broken stage light. The club is full of, guess qhose goons? Bouchard. And I'll probably see my grandfather before I get to the box.

In conclusion I lied my way through Parism will get the trinket, and totally not die doing that. I need to do some things that sound like a bad thriller. I need to find this Bouchard guy, I need to talk to Rennes (the pawn shop owner apparently) like Pierre (bartender) told me to, and I have a day to figure all this out. He offered me to sleep at a dorm above his café, I accepted it and shoved a cupboard in front of the door. I heard junkies outside and the place is crawling with shadows.

Transcript of the sixth and seventh page: Here's the super accurate perfect correctly scaled map by Pierre. I slept like crap and I got keys from him. He won't go there with me so I need to get in myself, I will use the door I wanted to ahem shatter at first. If anybody asks, I am a janitor.

Writing this in a parallel street again and I'm feeling anxious. So. The club Pierre said was full of goons is full of people. No kidding. There were dead security men on the floor, electronic music blasting, the blood wasn't dried out completely. The top floor was not to be reached by me, the stairs were stuffed with musical equipment. And I'm not touching anyone. I called the police anonymously and my plan is now as follows: i'll get myself a box that's fitting into the stage lights. The pawn shop should be suitable for that. I'll tell Pierre he can pick up the box at, let's say, the park. And I'm doing it for professional secrecy reasons. Like, what is he pitching it in exchange??

I'll get a box, go to Pierre, tell him to spit his information out, leave and never be seen again.

[mlwritersguild]

The world is still sleeping, while I keep on dreaming, by @queer-cosette

Based on John Rzeznik's I'm Still Here (submitted by @thedreadpirateholmes)

AO3 link; Grief/Mourning, Autistic Adrien Agreste/Chat Noir, Disabled Character, Brain Damage, Partially Blind Character, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Permanent Injury, descriptions of an accident that lead to permanent injury, Advice, Eye Trauma, brief mention of Christianity

Summary:

On the second anniversary of his mother's disappearance, Adrien is struggling with grief - not just for her, but for the family his father doesn't seem to want to fix. Marinette's cousin offers him some advice.

Written for the Miraculous Ladybug Writers' Guild's August Challenge; partly inspired by I'm Still Here by John Rzeznik. Carlotta is an OC who pops up frequently in my ML fics; this one features a lot of her backstory.

Rated M

———————————–

Friday, 1pm

Le Collège Françoise Dupont

4th Arrondissement

Paris, France

It’s just another normal Friday lunchtime for Carlotta Suero-Dupain, until she opens the art cupboard and finds Adrien Agreste sitting on the floor with his chin resting on his knees and his hands clamped to his ears. Although initially taken aback at finding her classmate uncharacteristically lacking most of his composure, she sets aside her surprise in favour of gently addressing him.

“Adrien? You doing okay?”

Adrien squints up at her, looking for all the world like a Crying Cat Meme. It occurs to Carlotta that he’s been sitting there in the dark and she’s just exposed his eyes to a lot of light, so she gently closes the door behind her and sinks down next to him, abandoning her quest for a decent highlighter pen for the moment.

“I’m guessing that’s a no. Bad day, huh?”

Adrien makes a little noise that sounds like half a laugh, half a sob. “You could say that,” he croaks. “Lila wouldn’t leave me alone, so I snuck in here while she was in the loo.”

“Can’t blame you,” Carlotta says, making extra effort to put a smile into her voice. The cupboard is too dark for her limited eyesight to make out his face; it seems politest to assume he can’t see hers either. “She’s like the world’s most mendacious limpet.” Adrien lets out a little amused snort at that. “But I’m guessing today was especially bad compared to normal?”

Adrien sighs softly, and while it sounds sad, he doesn’t seem to be on the verge of tears anymore. “Most of our class know that this week is a hard one for me. Even Chloé gets it. But, I dunno, either Lila didn’t bother to ask anyone about it, or she did ask but just doesn’t care.” He falls silent, and Carlotta settles herself against what feels like the collage box, letting him keep the metaphorical stage for the time being. At last, Adrien sighs again, but now he sounds more frustrated than sad.

“Tomorrow marks the second anniversary of my mom disappearing.”

And that rings a bell; Carlotta remembers Marinette mentioning something about this - her cousin had been running around the Dupain-Cheng’s kitchen, frantically making passionfruit macarons that Carlotta had been expressly forbidden from sampling. A gift for Adrien, so he knew Marinette was thinking of him and wishing him an easy time of it. Sweet of her.

She can’t think of anything to say, but then Adrien continues, “It feels like it shouldn’t be as painful as it was last year. But everything just feels… like it’s too much. And I haven’t seen my father all week, and I just… I just wish I could talk to him. But I couldn’t even make an appointment. Nathalie insists he’s too busy.”

Carlotta sighs sadly, and reaches for where she thinks his leg might be, patting a knee-shaped thing gently. “I’m sorry, Adrien,” she says softly.

“Thanks,” Adrien replies. “Sorry I took up the end of your lunchtime.”

“‘S’alright. It’s good to talk about it, y’know?”

“Yeah, you’re right. It feels… not so bad now. Thanks.”

The actual bell rings at that moment, and they both jump up, hurrying to leave the classroom before anyone catches them leaving the cupboard together and starts making assumptions. Carlotta pokes her head out the classroom door first and glances around, before beckoning Adrien to follow her.

“Lila’s not anywhere out here. I can’t see any sign of that tacky jacket.”

“Thank God,” Adrien sighs, emerging into the corridor. He looks noticeably less stressed than he had been when she found him in the cupboard, and an idea strikes her.

“Listen, Adrien,” Carlotta says hurriedly, tapping his shoulder. He looks around at her, apparently surprised. “If you ever want to talk to someone who, I dunno, doesn’t know all of it already… I just find that sometimes a fresh perspective helps, I guess. So if you want to talk to me about anything that’s going on, any shit that’s bothering you… I’m here.”

Adrien stares at her, his big green eyes round and incredulous. “You… you’re sure?”

“‘Course. Tell you what,” Carlotta adds as they both start down the hallway towards the science labs, “I’m usually at the skatepark on Sundays after eleven o’clock, you know the one around the corner from the little cinema on Impasse Carrière-Mainguet? If you ever wanna chat, it’s pretty quiet. All the usual crowds are sleeping off Saturday night.”

Adrien is still staring at her, but now a small smile is tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.” Carlotta smiles sincerely at him as they enter the science lab, before hurrying over to the desk she shares with Ivan. Adrien sits down in his own spot next to Nino, but throws a full smile over his shoulder at Carlotta before Ms Mendeleiev enters and begins explaining that day’s experiment.

As they begin organising the equipment for studying the combustion enthalpy of butanol, Carlotta ponders that, while Adrien is unlikely to take her up on her offer, she feels glad that it seems to have done something towards making him feel a little less crappy. That’s all you can hope for, after all.

------------

Sunday, 11am

Skatepark de Charonne

11th Arrondissement

Paris, France

As his Chat Noir transformation melts away and Plagg tucks himself into his favourite pocket, Adrien watches as Carlotta effortlessly slides her skateboard along the park’s flatrail and ollies off it before effortlessly mounting the half-pipe ramp. True to her word, the skatepark is almost entirely deserted, and she stands out against the tranquil scenery, a vibrantly energetic figure clad in a floral turquoise summer dress and matching cardigan. It’s an outfit that seems far too bizarrely formal for skateboarding in, and it’s a far cry from her normal wardrobe of scruffy cargo shorts and appliqué-adorned crop-tops, although she’s refused to part with her stripy knee socks and scuffed red converse. But before he can do anything more than ponder this, she spots him and waves.

“Adrien! Hola!”

Adrien waves back and approaches her as she easily turns the board around, exits the half-pipe, and tail-flips the board into the air, catching it and tucking it under her arm. “Didn’t think you’d come,” Carlotta admits, sitting down on one of the benches at the edge of the skating area. “But I’m glad you did.”

“Yeah,” Adrien smiles, sitting next to her and leaning back. “I didn’t think I’d get the chance, but it’s the Gorilla’s day off, and Nathalie had to help Father with… well, I think he locked himself out of his own iPad, so they might be there a while. I took my chance and snuck out the back window.”

“Adults versus tech, huh?” Carlotta laughs, removing her helmet and shaking out her hair. “My dad nearly spontaneously combusted last year when my sister Geneviéve filled up his harddrive with photobooth selfies. Couldn’t figure out how to get rid of them, poor guy. Mom called the computer store when it started looking like he might tear out his moustache.”

Adrien laughs with her. Carlotta isn’t someone he’s particularly close to - he really only knows her through Marinette - but she’s funny and easy to talk to, and like every friendship he’s made since starting school, talking and laughing with someone makes his heart feel the lightest it has in a long time.

“So what’s with the dress?” he asks, the tiniest hint of teasing creeping into his voice. Carlotta groans.

“I didn’t want to miss you if you did come, so I didn’t bother changing after Mass.”

“I didn’t know you were Catholic.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not good at it,” Carlotta laughs. “I really only go to make my parents happy.”

Adrien feels a little twinge in his chest at that. “I get that,” he says softly. “You don’t wanna let them down.” Even though you feel like you can never be who they want you to be.

Carlotta sighs, but it seems to be an agreeing noise, and they fall into amiable silence, broken only when Adrien compliments her helmet: it’s purple with a light-blue cartoon whale sticker on one side. Carlotta smiles and taps it lightly with her fingers.

“Can’t be too careful.” She pauses, tilting her head at him, then - “So, you wanted to chat?”

Adrien sucks in a breath, letting it out slowly. “Yeah. I, uh, I’m not really sure where to start -”

“You can just talk,” Carlotta suggests, surveying him through her thick eyelashes. “Just whatever’s on your mind. And I’ll listen. If you want.”

He nods, because that does sound good. Over the next half-hour, Adrien tells her everything - how his mom vanished two years ago, how he doesn’t know if she walked out or was kidnapped or what happened, if she ever intends on coming back, if she’s even alive, how much he misses her; and then he explains how not once through his grieving process - because he’s almost crushed with grief for losing her - has he been able to turn to his father for support. Adrien just wants to keep the last parental relationship he has, but his father forces him to make an appointment before even giving him the time of day, and while his existence up until this point has been lonely in general, that was nothing compared to what it’s been like these last few years, with no mother, and a father who seems intent on locking his son out of his life. How last year, he’d felt like they might be ready to move on and accept that this was the Agreste family’s new normal, but his father had brought all that crashing down with only a few words, and now they’re two years in and Adrien feels more confused about it than ever.

“I just thought,” he tells Carlotta, his voice hoarse with how much he’s been talking, and he’s definitely going to be in deep shit later if he can’t disguise it, “maybe this week… he’d want to be closer. Want to talk or spend time together, anything. Acknowledge that we can still find a way to be a family. But I couldn’t even make an appointment. He’s… too busy. And I know he misses her too, probably even more than I do, and that this is just his way of dealing with that, but… I just hoped that… this time… it would be… different.”

Carlotta, true to her word, has listened intently the whole time, occasionally nodding slightly, a trace of a frown adorning her face. She’s silent as he slumps back, her dark brown eyes scanning him slowly, as if to gauge whether or not he has anything else he needs to get out. But he’s told her everything he’s never been able to really tell anyone (short of the fact that his only escape from this painful homelife is donning the Chat Noir costume and fighting supervillains), and when he doesn’t speak for two whole minutes, she shifts sitting positions so one leg is now tucked up onto the bench, the other still dangling with her converse toe scuffing the ground slightly.

“Is it…” she says slowly. “Would it be okay, Adrien, if I told you a story?”

“Uh. Sure. I guess.”

“Just… I have some advice for you - you don’t have to take it if you don’t want to. It’s just one person’s opinion. But it doesn’t make sense without the story - or, well, it makes more sense. With the context added.”

Adrien mulls this over. What little time he has spent with her has given him the impression that Carlotta Suero-Dupain is not the type to give someone advice in bad faith, so he nods. “Go for it.”

Carlotta gnaws her bottom lip. “Alright. So… You know how I trip over my own feet a lot, and some days I can’t walk in a straight line, and sometimes I use a sight cane at school?”

Adrien nods; Carlotta doesn’t trip quite as often as Marinette does, but she’s got a reputation for being clumsy, and in the past he’s wondered if her occasional stumbling and wobbling while she walks might have been a sign of too much teenage freedom. As for the sight cane, it had taken him by surprise the first time he saw her with it, carefully sensing her way up the stairs to class, but he’s vaguely aware that she seems to have trouble seeing where she’s going all the time.

“It’s because, about two years ago, I had an accident while I was skateboarding. It was a really stupid one. I went backwards down a hill, which I shouldn’t have done in the first place, and I hadn’t planned how to break… then I hit a high curb. I flew twenty feet, then skidded another ten, and I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up in hospital. I’d been…” Her voice wobbles a little, but she soldiers on. “I’d been put in an induced coma. And when I woke up, I couldn’t see anything because I had to wear eyepatches while my eyes were recovering. Because… when I landed, it caused permanent brain damage.”

“Oh,” Adrien says quietly, because he’s not sure what else he can say to that.

“My occipital lobe was… It took a really bad hit. It’s like I can only see the right of everything, because the left side of my visual field is just… gone. It was my right side that I landed on, and brains flip everything around, so…” Carlotta laughs bitterly. “I have to use the cane on low atmospheric pressure days, because I get migraines that make it too hard to see at all, really. My arm and ribs got it pretty bad too. It’s pretty much all scar tissue from my shoulder to my waist on that side. Sometimes I can’t move my fingers properly.” She kicks at the ground, gnawing her lip again. “My brother and sister saw it happen.”

“God,” Adrien breathes, horrified at the thought. Carlotta's lips press together; there’s a sadness in her expression that he isn’t used to seeing from her.

“Yeah. They… they didn’t realise anything was wrong, at first. When I didn’t get up, they just thought I was joking, that I was doing a bit. And…” she laughs, and it sounds sad, but also very genuine, “Juanito drew a chalk outline around me. He thought it was funny. But when I still didn’t get up… I think Juanito still blames himself for it.”

She sighs heavily.

“He told me once that sometimes, when he can’t sleep, he just lies there thinking about it and wondering, what if he hadn’t goofed around? What if, instead of drawing a chalk outline, he’d checked to see if I was okay? He would have seen that… my helmet was completely cracked open at the back. He would have got to our parents quicker, and I’d have gone to the hospital quicker, and maybe the damage wouldn’t have been as severe. And I think that way myself too, sometimes. What if I’d planned better? What if I’d never tried to do the stupid stunt in the first place?”

“I’m so sorry,” Adrien whispers. Carlotta gently pats his arm.

“But that’s the thing, Adrien. You can’t go through life thinking like that. Because the past is the past, but time keeps marching on. You have to find a way to keep living. Because your mom might not be around, but you’re still here. You’re still living and growing and thinking and hurting. You have to find a way to live with it, even if your father can’t. Sorry if it seems harsh…”

Adrien shakes his head. Her words make a lot of sense. “It’s not. Is that how you can still skate even after…?”

Carlotta smiles and nods. “Yup. Found a way. I don’t want to let worry or fear run my life. Not everyone can manage it, because sometimes that’s life. But some fools are luckier than others, and I’m one of the ones who got lucky. If I hadn’t been wearing a helmet…”

She shivers.

“It could have been way worse. Some people think it’s reckless of me to keep skating after what happened, but I’m not stupid. I learned to skate with my off-foot forward. I come to this skatepark when it’s quiet, I know every inch of it like the back of my hand, I don’t skate when it’s crowded or if I don’t know what the topography is like. Next year I’ll be able to get prism contacts, so I won’t have such a massive blind-spot. And it sucks sometimes, that I can’t do exactly what I want. But it means I can keep living my life. We can’t let our grief for the past take away our future. And you can’t let your father’s ongoing pain stop you from allowing yours to heal.”

She gets up at that, dropping her skateboard onto the ground and rolling it experimentally under her right foot. It occurs to Adrien that most people skate with their left foot at the front, leaving their right free to manoeuvre with. But that’s not an option for Carlotta. He wonders how hard it was to learn how to completely reverse her entire stance. It must have taken so much time and effort and patience. But she managed it, and it’s become so natural to her that if she hadn’t told him, he wouldn’t have noticed.

Find a way to keep living.

“How do I do that?” he finds himself asking. “Keep on living?”

Carlotta shrugs. “It’s up to you. Find a new hobby. Start back with an old one. Make the most of the relationships that aren’t in flux right now. You have a lot of friends, Adrien,” she smiles. “Everyone in our class thinks you’re great. I get wanting to avoid Lila, and I know your schedule is tight, but everyone else is willing to be there for you, if you show them a way that they can do that.”

She grins. There’s a long white scar on her cheek; it stretches when her mouth moves, but not in an ugly way. It looks like someone’s drawn a line on her face to connect up her dark freckles like they’re constellations.

“Hey, if you’ve got the rest of the day off, I know Marinette usually bakes on Sundays. Y’know, in their actual kitchen, rather than in the bakery. She’d probably dig your company.”

“Are you sure?” It seems too good to be true - Marinette is so sweet, and her baking is always amazing, but he can’t help but feel she’s unusually reserved with him, in a way she isn’t with everyone else.

“Trust me. Very sure. She just gets overwhelmed easily, like, in her head and stuff. Overthinks everything. But…” Carlotta’s grin widens. The scar becomes a perfect semicircle. “She keeps living in spite of it. And she’d love to hang out with you.” She clips on her helmet, and Adrien knows the conversation is over.

“Carlotta?”

Carlotta looks back at him; for the first time, he consciously notices how she turns further around to face him than most people would. Of course. Missing vision field.

“Thanks. I mean it.”

Carlotta smiles gently at him. “You’re still here, Adrien. Don’t let the world change who you are for people who can’t understand that.”

She pushes off, rolling away from the bench towards the half-pipe. Adrien watches her leave, feeling unusually peaceful. Marinette doesn’t live far from here. It’s shaping up into a pretty okayish day after all.

He’s still here.

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this Week #117 (Year 3/Week 13):

Victoria is an unusual low-budget, German crime thriller, and much to my surprise, my most interesting film of the week! It’s my second with lovely Spanish actress Laia Costa (after the romantic ‘Only you’), and my 8th ‘Single-take film’ (*).

The technical trickery for a 2+ hour long movie filmed in one long take by a single camera, wasn’t visually impressive, and definitely far from the artistic heights of ‘Russian Arc’, or ‘1917′. Basically, one nimble cameraman followed the developing story into clubs, rooftops, cars, streets, bars, and hotels without calling attention to itself.

Victoria is a young Spanish waitress in Berlin. After dancing all-night at a techno club, she meets a group of 4 small-time criminals, and hangs with them, getting drunk and stoned. Drawn to the aura of danger, she inexplicably agrees to join them, and ends up driving a stolen van for an adventure that quickly turns lethal.

The story itself didn’t gel until around the 45 minute mark. Just as I was ready to quit the movie, she sits down to a piano in an empty cafe, and after some coaxing from a guy, she beautifully plays one of Liszt Mephisto waltzes, disclosing that had studied music all her life, and had to give it up because she wasn’t good enough. From that point, the second half ‘tied the room together’ into an absorbing bundle. 8/10.

(*) After ‘Rope’, ‘Russian arc’, ‘Lost in London’, ‘Birdman’, ‘1917′, ‘Boiling Point’ and ‘Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes’.

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4 more with Léa Seydoux:

🍿 “... Some people, though talented, need help to thrive. They languish when left to their own devices...”

Léa Seydoux is so attractive that just watching her on the screen is like experiencing pure beauty, my definition of a superstar. My Wife's Romance is a slow psychological thriller about a woman whose husband disappears in mysterious circumstances. A different kind of a French drama, by a Tajik director, and with a parallel Tajik sub-plot. 7/10.

🍿 The Beautiful Person is a modernized teen drama adapted from an impenetrable 1678 historical novel. The many confusing intrigues of unrequited love among a group of 16 year-old high-schoolers and their teachers replace the complicated royal courtships of the classic story. But the only redeeming feature for me here was Seydoux’s ethereal beauty, which also effected everybody in the story who came in contact with her.

Strangely, both these two unrelated films ended with her saying the exact same sentence: “You will never see me again”. 2/10.

🍿 Prada: Candy, a 3 minute perfume ad, directed by Wes Anderson And Roman Coppola, about a threesome with Léa Seydoux, Umbrellas of Cherbourg-style.

🍿 Time doesn’t stand still, a meaningless artsy short film about caresses and goodbyes in one of them high-ceiling apartments of the good arrondissements.  

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First re-watch in 20+ years, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Ang Lee’s wuxia fairy tale was the first foreign-language film to break the $100 million mark in the US. With the beatific Zhang Ziyi. (Photo Above).

🍿  

2 with French character actor Richard Bohringer:

🍿 It’s not very clear through the first half of the French story The Grand Highway what is it about; Innocence Lost when 2 kids love each other like in ‘Jeux interdits’? A childless couple who despises each other like ‘Le Chat’? Or a rural drama like the nostalgic ‘Jean de Florette’?

A 9-year-old Parisian boy is sent for a summer to a small village in Bretagne, while his pregnant mother waits to give birth. He stays with the mother’s friend and her husband, whose relationship is cold and hostile, and he's befriended by a wild 10-year-old girl who teaches him the ways of the world. It’s a beautiful, romantic and evocative drama. Highly recommended - 7/10.

🍿 Angelina Jolie’s gorgeous 4th film, By The Sea, is about voyeurism and depression, but it ended up being an empty vanity exercise. The glamorous and wealthy Jolie and Brad Pitt arrives at one of the most romantic spots on earth, a small Maltese village, and stay at a magnificent Mediterranean villa by the coast. Their relationship is in tatters, she’s withdrawn and he drinks. Then they discover a peephole to the next suite, and they can watch a newly-married couple having sex. Will this heal their unexplained funk?

You want to love it but they won’t let you. She doesn’t speak, so we never find out why. He’s a writer who can’t write. Has there ever been a convincing movie about a writer. This one is not. 3/10.

However, I always love it when movies are 100% symmetrical, when climaxes occur on the dot, at the 30-minute and 60-minute points. Here too, the delineating point of the story happens exactly at 1 hour and 1 minute (out of a 2 hours and two minutes), when they start watching together the young couple next door fucking.  

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Enchanted April, another entry in the popular sub-genre of romantic travelogues to the Mediterranean areas of Italy, or the south of France. But the story of 4 different London women in the 1920′s who decide to rent an Italian villa on their own was not a feminist tale of emancipation and discovery, rather a boring class-based mush. My second mediocre film from Mike Newell (after the horrible ‘Love in the time of cholera’). 2/10.

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The Killers X 4:

🍿 The killers (1946), my first film noir by Robert Siodmak. With Burt Lancaster (in his film debut) waiting fatalistically for death in his room, and Ava Gardner in her breakthrough role. The lead gets murdered in the opening scene, and the story is then told all in flash-backs. Got me wanting to watch ‘Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid’ again.

🍿 Re-reading the Hemingway short story on which the movie was based on, it’s obvious that the only part of the plot from the original story are the first 15 minutes, which have the best dialogue in the whole movie.

🍿 Don Siegel’s harsh remake transferred the Noir menace into the sunny racetracks of Rialto, CA. The very short Hemingway notion about a guy laying on a bed in a room who doesn’t run away from death, was completely removed here, and instead turned into a gory and violent pulp. Terrific 1964 pop-vibes with professional hit-men Lee Marvin and partner as the clear inspirations to Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield.

But just seeing Evil Empire Ronald Reagan getting slapped is worth the price of admission.

🍿 There is also a 1956 Russian version of The killers, Andrei Tarkovsky very first short, directed when he was a student at a Moscow film school. He plays the second customer who comes to the bar.

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The Woman in the Window by Fritz Lang, another nightmarish film noir - actually the film that originated the term itself. A terrific suspense story about “respectable” professor Edward G. Robinson, who “strays” by accepting an offer for a drink with a woman not his wife, and MUST PAY FOR IT WITH HIS LIFE!

The trailer.

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Night Will Fall is a documentary about a documentary. It chronicles the making of ‘German Concentration Camps Factual Survey’, an official British documentary film on the Nazi concentration camps, which was based on actual footage shot by the Allied forces in 1945. Alfred Hitchcock’s was brought in from Hollywood to complete the original which would make it his only documentary. However, due to changing politics after the liberation, the original film was abandoned uncompleted, shelved and forgotten for 70 years.

Both films contain harrowing footage of the most gruesome atrocities as they were first discovered in Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz, Majdanek and Dachau. 9/10. 

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Curiosity-Find!

The Poor Man of Nippur (2019) is the World’s First Film Made in Babylonian, the Language of Ancient Mesopotamia. It’s an adaptation of an old Akkadian story dating from around 1500 BC, found on an archeological site in Turkey. It tells the story of the three-fold revenge which the destitute Gimil-Ninurta wreaks on the local Mayor after the latter wrongs him. The film version of this ancient text is a creation of students from Trinity Collage and Cambridge Assyriology Department. The 20 minutes short is available on YouTube.

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2 with Gaby Hoffmann (Viva’s daughter!):

🍿  My second by Sebastián Silva (After the masterful ‘The Maid’), Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus. An off-beat drama about a self-absorbed Michael Cera who travels with 3 young Chilean friends to the desert, looking for an hallucinogenic plant, to trip on its mescaline-like properties. On the way, they pick up free-spirited Gaby Hoffmann whose new-age hippy-dippy sensibilities clash with the obnoxious Cera. Its rambling, shaky camera fits the sensitive growth story. 6/10.

In the background, Edward Sharpe‘s ‘Man on Fire’ is playing, so you know it’s good. 🍿 This is my life, Nora Ephron’s directorial debut. It’s about single mom Marge Simpson who becomes a comedian and her two daughters. This was 3 years after ‘Field of dreams’ so Hoffmann still looked and acted like Karin Kinsella. The movie itself was just not funny, or good.

🍿    

2.5 by Finnish director Jalmari Helander:

🍿 Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, which Cate Blanchett named “one of her favorite movies”. A surprising Christmas horror comedy about hunting mean and evil Santa Clauses and training them as mall Santas, so they can be exported all over the world for the holidays. The well-told fable is told from a boy point-of-view. [From here].

This is based on his old throwaway joke short, Rare Exports Inc. which I remember from 2005.

🍿 He followed this with a big action-adventure film, Big Game, where the plane of the President of the United States, Samuel L. Jackson, is being shot down over the same remote area in Finland, and the same boy actor (as well as his father) rescues him and saves his ass. Lame. 3/10.

🍿

April's Daughters, my second by Mexican director Michel Franco’s unsettling Puerto Vallarta dramas. His existential ‘Sundown’, with his regular colleague Tim Roth, was emotionally mesmerizing, but so well-done. This one was an unpleasant roller-coaster, like a baby that won’t stop crying, which is a big part of this soundtrack. Here too there’s a protagonist who abandons their family without any explanation. A cruel mother and two young daughters who are left to fend for themselves. A Michael Haneke-style devastation.

🍿    

First watch: Grosse Pointe Blank. A romantic black comedy about a professional hit man, who’s cool as a Fonzie, or even as a Clarence Worley. Peak Minnie Driver, and Peak John Cusack, and with a score by Joe Strummer. So maybe I will watch True Romance once again (my most favorite Tarantino’s)?. 5/10.

🍿  

2 by Jessica McGoff:

🍿 My Mulholland, a creative video essay by the young Scottish intellectual about watching David Lynch's ‘Mulholland Drive’ when she was thirteen. (Via).

🍿 Her lovely short essay Balloons in Cinema (2021), Commissioned by BFI to support the release of the German movie ‘Balloon’. 

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A fascinating discussion between The Coen Brothers and their DP Barry Sonnenfeld, talking about how they shot and filmed their very first film, ‘Blood Simple’.  

Mentioned in the hour long talk is the fake trailer starring Bruce Campbell which they shot the year before, in order to raise the $1.5M for the movie.

Similar conversations on the ‘Cinematographers on cinematography’ YouTube channel.

🍿  

Re-watch: Crimes and Misdemeanors, a perfectly balanced Woody Allen movie. Multiple stories interlock brilliantly; existential guilt, subtle morals, blindness and murder. All the while he’s grooming his teenage niece, and tries to cheat on his wife. 9/10.

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Chris Rock: Tamborine, a 2018 stand-up special directed by Bo Burnham. 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. 

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After reading some good things that the new Tetris origin story is better than what it could have be, I gave it a try. However I couldn’t stay on for more than 19-20 minutes: With a non-charismatic, bland main guy, and superficial and infantile direction, dusting up an old copy of the game would have been much better use of that time. 1/10.

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(My complete movie list is here)

[miraculousfrenchculture]

Hello, I don't know if you already answered this type of question but I'm just wondering. Does Paris have a sort of China Town equivalent of sort, also does Paris celebrate Lunar/Chinese New Year. I really want the show to have a special of sort to show these celebration, and it can be like Kung Food, an episode that focuses on racism between different Asian cultures, cause often enough people confused Lunar and Chinese New year, in which there very different celebration depends on the culture

Hi!

Yes, Paris does have a Chinatown-equivalent, we answered an ask about it here 😊

There are Lunar/Chinese New Year celebrations in Paris, held mostly there, and in the 4th arrondissement, next to the Mairie de Paris!

It would indeed be very interesting to have an episode like that! And we might have something like that in the future, given that (minor spoiler alert) the location appears in some episodes of S5 👀

Hope it helps!