MovieChat Forums > San Antonio (2004) Discussion > Cultural Difference

Cultural Difference

posted 18 years ago by elpopieto
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Guys,
I haven't seen this movie yet, but it seems hard to think that a non french can actually understand who or what San Antonio is. I know it sounds arrogant and pretentious, but the work of Mister Frederic Dard could not translate. It is an exquisite mix of high level french literature and extremely low parisian slang. Dard was definately a master of both, and that is where the genius of San Antonio lays. Unfortunately, i don't think the translation did grace to that movie. San Antonio is NOT a faded copy of James Bond, but the archetype french "Macho" from the 70's. He is a parody, not a fantasy.
Anything else would be mistaken, so I just thought I would rectify and try to pay respect to his creator.

[–] cayenne-3 18 years ago

I have to say that I absolutely agree with you - I haven't seen the movie (yet) but I was just trying the explain the brilliant linguistic work of Frédéric Dard to an American friend last night and as much as I would like to be able to convey the genius of the author, there is not way to fully translate the language and the characters in another language or culture. Don't forget that they even came up with a San Antonio dictionary (French-French!) to explain all the slang and crazy linguistic creations Dard came up with... It is the same thing with Les Visiteurs (The Visitors) with Jean Reno and Christian Clavier. The whole movie is playing with languages: the one used by Béatrice de Montmirail (Valérie Lemercier), archetype of the French aristocracy in the 90s, the one used by the Visitors themselves, XIIth century French, and even the French slang used by the French beggar... :-)