Here's a strange thing. All our lives, movies have taught us that for love relationships to happen, men must be tall and smooth-skinned and lookgreat in Levi's (let's not even think about how women must be). Yet the very people responsible for generating the myth are often polar opposites of the characters they create. I'm talking about guys like Alfred Hitchcock, Bernardo Bertolucci, Quentin Tarantino -- at first glance they look like total noncontenders in the dating market. But as we all know, their names are coupled with the most glamorous women in the world.
And what about Jean-Luc Godard? I still recall the utter shock of seeing him in one of his movies (it was "Prenom Carmen"). There I was, imagining some James Dean lookalike wearing beret and border T-shirt and discovering him to be . . . please, don't make me say it.
Well, that sealed my puzzlement about French tastes. Consider that when Jean-Paul Sartre was cancer-ridden and incontinent, he still had nine lovers. As for Godard, he's known to have worked through a long string of celebrated beauties that included Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau. So what happens to the tall and smooth-skinned men?