In the subtitled version I saw, the women have fun with the words "clever" and "clover". My guess is that in the orginal French, this was a totally different word play. Maybe the French version of the word "clever" and some random surreal word that sounds like it- but unlikely a translation for "clover".
Can anyone help?
Strange, because the version I just watched used the word parsley instead of clover. No word play atall, just incredibly surreal statements like "Instead of using words like mind and soul we should use 'parsley'"....apologies for inaccurate quoting but stuff that weird is hard to remember accurately.
shareHello! I believe I can help, I was looking up the film on Wikipedia and found the following info regarding the translation...
"Another noticeable aspect of the film is its liberal smattering of puns. Most of these only work in French, but the translators have done a sterling job of rendering them into English. For instance, the title of the film, "Céline et Julie vont en bateau" has a hidden meaning, because "aller en bateau" also means "to get caught up in a story that someone is telling you". Towards the end of the film, there is much talk of "persil" (parsley) and "esprit" (spirit or wit). The parsley is used to make the potion, and "wit" refers to the duo's ability to outwit the house. The translators have rendered this as clover/clever."
Hope that helps!
In french we say "mener en bateau" for "to get caught up in a story that someone is telling you", so it's not exactly "aller en bateau" (going).
Also, Esprit / Persil, do not really rhyme (there is a subtle L at the end of persil) but it's really because they can almost be anagrams, i'd say.
And there are many references to witchcraft, flowers and plants (the house), so I guess the parsley took the role of the magic herb witches would use.
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