I feel I can impart some of the excitement that settles upon the house of an English dog, when one or another of HM's elegant dominions accounts for itself in our circulation. Without making too much of it, it's unquestionably cause for a conspicuously unbroken biscuit, and an unscheduled run before naptime on a Sunday afternoon. Readers will well remember the stir that was caused by our reaching Kuala Lumpur, but our taste for Kipling is containable with a fond pat on the rump and a ruffling of one's ears. Jersey, on the other hand, conjures Isabel Adjani as Adèle H, which is to say, Isabel Adjani for so much as an instant's reprieve from gravity, itself. Readers of the ineffably worldly Little Augury will need no introduction to that jejune, spontaneous daub of enthusiasm we splashed for her there, merely to encounter The Face, with nowhere to turn. Now, to think that the same demure tectonic relic she paced while pining for Lieutenant Pinson, furnishes shelter to a reader of ours, is to lift the whole fulcrum of our resolution overhead, to trod the very galaxies for traces of her sighs.
Isabel Adjani
Photo: Brigitte Lacombe
François Truffaut
L'histoire d'Adèle H.
Les Filmes du Carrosse, 1976©
What about New Jersey? Where I was born and raised.
ReplyDeleteWhile New Jersey figures prominently in the history of our cinema, Bruce - Louis Malle's "Atlantic City" corresponds most with my 'likes' - my Isabel Adjani dossier comes up empty on her having graced your homeland with her presence. The situation, however, is far from so bleak as regards the English Cocker Spaniel, to whom Mrs Dodge's Giralda Farms in Madison is, beyond peradventure, the Plymouth rock of the breed in America, and whose Morris & Essex and Orange Kennel Clubs mark the Gospel and the Epistle side of the altar of breed conservation on this continent. We, who know such a brighter world for these beasts than we have the right to expect, do not dismiss New Jersey as anything like that dismal shore its politics would make of it. Plus, of course, it's so convenient to Philadelphia for golf, and New York for lunch. But there you are about New Jersey, yes? Something far, far out of proportion to its size must be at work in that terroir, to harbour two such cities at its gateways of such profound dissimilarity.
ReplyDeleteThe face of an angel. It suits Adjani, though as we have touched on before-that exquisite beauty that stares back at one in the mirror-as the years pass must tell a true story or a false one. She will long out live her truth and trade it for a false lover-at 55 she is finding solace in its restoration- and forsaking what would otherwise be more beautiful. I do believe that-not just waxing bs. and that Whit is another with the face of an angel no matter the age-is indisputable. pgt
ReplyDeleteIsabel Adjani exercises the heartstrings in work which her trade has providentially put on record. With respect, what she might do with her appearance today must probably owe something to some tug from that trade, that we know nothing about. I agree, it could be horrid not to be able to welcome her as she would be, but as you say, when we see her as the reine Margot or as Adèle Hugo, we can see an unexpired, amazingly pretty young woman. As for the doggish scoundrel, he is still too much reveling in his part of the handsome boy of the house, to stoop to angelicism. But we will bear your kind prediction in mind .. :)
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