The dvd I bought yesterday has English and Spanish subtitles. Lady Rensing's interpretation of the conversation between Chris and the cafe owner is correct.
I always wondered why they didn't put in subtitles for the french conversations. My DVD although has english subtitles for the hearing impaired. This helps....
When you watch the dvd you probably can choose to have subtitles on, but I figured the director's choice NOT to put in English subtitles with the French conversations had to be a very intentional choice. I'm from the U.S. and a lot of people here have an attitude that English is the only language anyone that lives here needs to know. Learning foreign languages isn't valued. It's a superior attitude which really bothers me, but I have to admit that although I have a higher education, I've never learned another language fluently either. I know a lot of other countries value learning other languages a lot more and that many people are fluent in 3+ languages. Perhaps the director, being European, figured that most of his audience would have at least a working knowledge of French, and if they didn't, well, that's their problem. Or maybe he felt that when filmmaking is very good that you really don't need the dialogue to get the jist of what is going on anyway.
Yes, Annick and Chris spoke English to each other most of the time. I don't think the French dialogue was that important to understand. I just watched it on TV here in Norway, and although I had the option of using Norwegian subtitles, I chose to watch it without. I would've used subtitles if they had spoken more French than they did, but then they would've annoyed me during the English dialogue.
I think your analysis is basically right, if leaning a bit too much to the harsh side. It's true that most Europeans and others know their own language plus English, almost at a minimum (3+ is a bit optimistic, unless one lives in a former Soviet Republic, Switzerland, or other border area). And I think the point here was that most educated Britons have a decent understanding of French.
I have a pretty decent command of French, and had little problem understanding Bale's French; but I DID have trouble following 'Henri' the cafe owner. He spoke almost entirely out of the side of his mouth with a cigarette in the other side. Plus, it was a fairly heavily accented French (at least to me). I would have appreciated the subtitles as a crutch; but figured out the gist anyway.
By the way, not only did Bale's character say he was an 'artist' not a 'journalist,' they also talked about his working at the cafe (which becomes obvious as we see him later working there); and about Annick.
I really would have appreciated subtitles. I know a tiny bit of French but like PVarjak I couldn't make out what the cafe owner was saying a lot of the time without rewatching him over and over. I've seen very few English-language films (even British ones) where there's that much non-English dialogue without subtitles - possibly Atonement is the only other one like this.
Does anyone know what the cafe owner's reply is to Bale's question about how do you know when you're in love? I *think* he says something like "it's like you'd know if your house was on fire".
Anyhow, hopefully someone will come along in the next year or two to answer this...
Yeah. I'm a Yank and I studied French for about five years (then kept up somewhat with reading, conversing, etc) and Bale's French is relatively easy for me to understand (plus the sentiments are not complicated) but Henri was a challenge for me. His accent was -- for a non-French person of course -- very thick indeed!
"I love those redheads!" (Wooderson, Dazed and Confused, 1993)
Thanks for getting me to revisit this thread. I wonder why the administrators deleted what seemed like a post with a summary of the French conversation?
The VHS copy I just watched released in the UK by Pathe (VFC 06218) has subtitles for the French scenes (including the scene on the British train where the two lads wind up the commuters). The subtitles look to be on the print that the video was mastered from, they don't look to have been added later.
I checked out your link; but there are no subtitles on it. Just the video.
Edit: Oops, I see you captioned it with the CC function. I thought you meant you'd hard-coded the subtitles. Thanks for doing that. As I figured, I didn't miss much. Time to view that movie again.