The heroine of Les gouts des autres is forty, single, and lonely; but for all her loneliness she refuses to compromise her high intellectual standards. She is a part time actress, interested in literature, drama and contemporary art; and surrounds herself with likeminded people. When a culturally illiterate businessman shows interest in her – to his utter surprise he is moved by a love soliloquy she gives in a performance of Berenice which he attends by accident and against his will – she turns him down flat. He begins to attend her circle and to buy pictures of her painter friend. She visits him in his offices: I think you are letting these people take advantage of your feelings for me, she tells him. Oh? He replies, you do not think it is possible that I may actually like these pictures? This shocks her: has she been too condescending? Is there more to the man than meets the eye?
The viewers don’t know which is the case, but they do recognize the basic mechanism of taste: that we are drawn to each other by our tastes; it seems to us that through their taste we learn something of the interior life of others. The existence of the mechanism is undeniable; but its effectiveness in bringing us together with suitable people is not. My closest, warmest friends do not share my cultural tastes; indeed, like the businessman in the film, they don’t have any to speak of; most of those who do share my tastes, on the other hand, upon inspection turn out somehow or other abnormal, unstable, unreliable. Sometimes it seems is as if cultural interests went arm in arm with emotional instability: I would not want to speculate which comes first.
No comments:
Post a Comment