Looking at faces during my underground hour, I felt more charitable to the Parisian species. Smiles remained almost totally absent, but it dawned on me that yesterday's elbow-shove and "damn the rest of you" behaviour was part of the end of summer ritual.
Now many are defying the sunshine by practising their January faces. It was their success in looking as careworn and miserable as they remained tanned and gaily dressed that touched me.
As a species, however, Americans still confound me. A superior psychological thriller made, in 1999, as a first feature by Canadian-born director Gregory Marquette, 'Innocents' or 'Dark Summer' (IMDb), came my way.
In commendable sleeve notes, Marquette acknowledges an occasional debt to Hitchcock, Kubrick, the Cohen brothers and David Lynch, but the film is very much his own, a first-rate début inspired by events in his life. His cast includes Connie Nielsen, Mia Kirshner, Anne Archer and Robert Culp.
Once I partially recovered last night from the impact of the tale, with all its twists and turns -- which were still working on my mind in the morning -- I was curious to see what others made of it.
That none of the American critics who slated the movie could read Marquette's notes is neither here nor there. The film should stand on its own merits. It does so in the eyes of some commentators at the IMDb, though I wouldn't go as far as somebody who thought it the best thing since 'The Silence of the Lambs'.
Marquette's fatal decision, however, was to choose one of France's most gifted actors for the main role. Jean-Hugues Anglade, who has never bothered with a bad movie as far as I know, may have shared my amusement at a uproar which took the film's rating at the IMDb down from the 8/10 I'd reckon it deserves to 4.9 probably for one reason alone.
A woman in Texas summed it up best: "The lead character played by this Jean Hughes Anglade was absolutely yummy -- for a French guy."
Why am I suddenly glad that the couch-potato masses of Americans who came to Paris this year have returned where they belong?
They may be a mildly entertaining diversion since they don't realise most people can understand what they're saying but prefer to keep that secret to themselves. Still, la rentrée does have its good points...
10:28:50 PM link 
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