Vers les rivages du Midi
Another soundtrack for a movie that doesn't exist, except that this one did happen to me in real life
The summer after my first year of college, right around this time of year, I traveled to France alone to spend two weeks with a penpal I met on the internet. Despite my mom’s initial skepticism toward this plan, I eventually persuaded her that it would be perfectly fine. I would stay with my friend and her mother outside Paris for the first couple days, then travel south with her father to the Côte d’Azur, where her family had vacationed in her childhood.
What neither I nor my friend knew until we were in her dad’s car, somewhere between Lyon and our destination of Roquebrune-sur-Argens, was that we would also be staying with the dad’s girlfriend, whose existence was a total surprise to my friend. When we met this woman, I got the impression that she hadn’t expected to spend her vacation with us either. She proceeded to spend the entire trip making our lives hell, subjecting every single thing we did to relentless scrutiny and criticism. The dad either declined to intervene or joined in.
I should note at this point that the only person I interacted with on this entire trip who knew any English, aside from some lost tourists in Paris, was my friend. I was pretty proud of myself for navigating someone else’s family drama and comments on the minutiae of my manners (the woman didn’t like the way I held my fork, for god’s sake) entirely in my second language, after having spent my first year of college picking up a third, but that didn’t stop me getting scolded for my hopelessly American accent by people who spoke French and nothing else.
But at the same time as all of this was happening, we were being driven to Cannes and Saint Tropez and Sanremo and Monaco and the French Alps, seeing some of the most beautiful scenery I had ever laid eyes on and doing things I either wouldn’t have been able to afford or wouldn’t have known how to find on my own, while spending time with someone I had known for several years but never before interacted with in person. It was simultaneously the coolest and most stressful experience of my life up to that point.
I’ve been preoccupied recently thinking about how, as a teenager and during college, I thought I would spend a significant chunk of my life, possibly my entire adult life, living in Europe. At the end of this trip, I fully expected to see my friend again in a couple years when I returned to France for a semester abroad. As it happened, I didn’t study abroad, didn’t move abroad after college, and have yet to go back to France. I never even took another French class after that summer.
I suppose there’s still time to move to another country, but I can’t really see myself doing it these days, for reasons personal and practical. I just feel nostalgic for the version of myself who was anticipating that future, spending every minute in France imagining that the exotic things I was doing (by which I mean shopping at Carrefour and drinking sirop à l'eau) might become my normal life, comme d’habitude.
I came out of the Weirdest Trip Ever convinced that I had to turn the whole thing into a screenplay. That has yet to materialize, but over the years I’ve worked out what the soundtrack would be. I’ve assembled that here, interspersed with some photos from the trip to make it a bit more colorful.
“The Theme from ‘A Summer Place’” by Percy Faith & His Orchestra (single, 1959)
“Nationale 7” by Stereo Total (Musique Automatique, 2001)
I only took pictures of the touristy/beautiful things we did and not the “boring” things, in part because I was trying to convince myself I was having fun and not being traumatized, which I now regret. My main memory from the drive south, other than the revelation that we would be staying with a stranger, was that my friend’s dad somewhat frequently pointed out castles clearly visible from the highway, a routine part of the scenery to the locals but mind-boggling to me.
“Sloop John B” by The Beach Boys (Pet Sounds, 1966)
If this were a real movie that I had complete creative control over, I would do what Wes Anderson did with Bowie in The Life Aquatic and get some French covers of Beach Boys songs recorded. No other artist so perfectly orchestrated the experience of having a bad time by the ocean in summer.
“Lo Boob Oscillator” by Stereolab (single, 1993)
“Beyond the Sea” by Percy Faith & His Orchestra (Bouquet, 1959)
I know it’s literally called the Côte d’Azur, but it really is crazy how blue the water is. The photos don’t do it justice. Being a New Englander who grew up going to the cold, gray beaches of Maine every summer, I found the Mediterranean unsettlingly warm to swim in. But I loved looking at it.
“Don’t Worry Baby” by The Beach Boys (Shut Down Volume 2, 1964)
“Nuit sauvage” by Les avions (Fanfare, 1987)
Please picture two somewhat dorky young adults, left alone for the evening, getting tipsy on rum and coke while blasting this song.
Nocturnes L. 98: I. Nuages by Claude Debussy (1892–1899)
“Pet Sounds” by The Beach Boys (Pet Sounds, 1966)
The dad and his girlfriend wanted to spend as much time as possible at the beach, and we wanted to spend as little time as possible with them, so we did a lot of sitting around at the cottage, which was hot and dry and nowhere near the sea, bored out of our minds but content in our freedom from being nagged for a few hours.
Again, I really wish I had some decent photos of the cottage (which I think was a converted farm shed), or the little lawn where we lounged in the shade, or the dirt road that ran along and behind it, where we practiced biking before deciding that neither of us could really ride a bike. When the tension of the trip finally turned into an all-out fight between us and the adults, we walked down that road until we were out of sight and earshot and called both of our mothers in tears.
Anyway, since then I’ve associated this song with that kind of pleasant yet also excruciating summer boredom.
“Belles! Belles! Belles!” by Claude François (single, 1962)
“Luna Park” by Pet Shop Boys (Fundamental, 2006)
I don’t think Neil Tennant was thinking of Luna Park Fréjus, but you never know.
À la manière de Borodine, M. 63: No. 1 by Maurice Ravel (1912–1913)
Call Me By Your Name came out the winter after my trip, and when I saw it I was blown away by how familiar the scenery looked, down to the outdoor tables covered in laminated gingham-print tablecloths. The vibe of having a weird time on a family vacation was also familiar. If I’m interpreting the date of origin on my Spotify playlist correctly, I think I began working on this “soundtrack” immediately after seeing the movie. Thus, the composition of it bears more than a coincidental similarity to the CMBYN soundtrack.
“La Madrague” by Brigitte Bardot (single, 1963)
I’m pretty sure the picture above was taken in Saint Tropez, where Brigitte Bardot had a vacation home and made a big impression on the community. She supposedly christened the tarte tropézienne, a mid-century invention by a local Polish baker. It’s now a specialty of Saint Tropez, and having tried it myself, I can understand why Bardot was crazy for it.
“Going Home” by Mark Knopfler (Local Hero, 1983)
Is it cheating to use music from a different movie soundtrack that is explicitly about leaving a place where you had a weird, transformative experience with the locals? Probably. Let’s just call this temp music. For the real movie, I’d get someone to compose a ripoff of it.
I did really listen to this as the plane was taking off, though.
On my last night in France, we had a surprisingly pleasant dinner with the adults and their vacation friends. It was the first time I felt like I was comfortable conversing in French and not missing 25-50% of what was going on around me. I thought I would build on those skills from there, but that turned out to be the peak of my fluency.
If I were to really produce the screenplay these days, I’d have to write it all in English and work with a translator. But I’m also not convinced it would actually make for a very interesting movie; it was merely the most interesting chapter in my life to date. I hope, if you got this far, it was moderately interesting to you, too, and not a self-indulgent bore. Let me know either way!