COLUMNISTS

Deidre Dare

I have a bone to pick with Diane Lane. 

It seems to me that Ms. Lane, the American actress, has singlehandedly been responsible for a phenomenon that is destroying the summer season in France and Italy. 

I pithily call this phenomenon "Menopausal Women Who Have Been Left by Their Husbands and Who Decide to Travel to Europe Supposedly in Search of Themselves, But Who Are Really Looking for Romance with a Hot Frenchman or Italian".

I was sitting outside at a ubiquitous Parisian cafe on Rue Montorgueil, having the ubiquitous coupe de champagne with a man who had travelled to Paris for the sole purpose of buying me a drink, when I first realised it was all Diane Lane's fault.

Next to us was one of these poor women: clearly American, because she had a bottle of Evian in her bag (why is it that all American tourists carry water with them in a city like Paris as though they were going on a trek through the Sahara Desert?), over 50, reading a guidebook and sporting a tan line where her wedding ring used to be. She was, of course, alone.

"There's someone who's watched too many Diane Lane movies," I said to my date, nodding in her direction.

"What do you mean?" he asked, pouring me more champagne.

I explained as follows. Diane Lane has spent the last 10 years or so making movies that involve women over 45 who are going through some version of the same formulaic crisis: their husbands have left them and their best friends have breast cancer. 

The heroine Ms. Lane is playing decides (usually at the prompting of her very cool daughter or the cancer-ridden mate) to follow the dreams of her youth and travel to Europe in search of who she used to be (before she married the Evil Cheating Husband who has left her for some artistic girl with long dark hair and a tendency to like to be fucked up against the walls of her sparsely-furnished loft while having her clothes ripped off).

The character, usually named something like "Helen", spends a lot of time gazing out of European train windows, taking in scenes of rolling hills carpeted with charming vineyards. She also spends a lot of time contemplating Renaissance art in mostly-empty, hushed museums.

Then, voila, some young, dark, mysterious European man falls madly in love with her after helping her out with some minor travelling snafu and she gets her own chance to be fucked against a wall and to have her clothes ripped off.

She then decides to move to Europe, which makes the Evil Cheating Husband decide that he wants her back. But it is too late for him; Helen has bought a lovely villa and moved on.

I can assure you: this never happens in real life.

In real life, these women wander through the region for a few weeks, dried out and bitter and taking up a lot of space, while their Evil Cheating Husbands wisely stay home and interview divorce attorneys.

Interestingly, not one of these women are Russian. So, I began to wonder:  why not?  And what are forsaken middle-aged Russian women doing instead?

Maybe they are wandering around Eastern Europe as an alternative. But I've wandered around Eastern Europe in the summer and I've not seen them there, either.

Perhaps Diane Lane movies aren't as popular in Russia as they are in the States? Or, maybe, Russian women watch these movies, realise how absurd they are, and choose to stay home and try to win their Evil Cheating Husbands back.

But what I really think is that Russian women are just more practical than Western women and that they are probably staying in Russia and doing the Russian equivalent of what any sensible woman in America would do.

Interviewing divorce attorneys.

xxoo, DD

Deidre Dare's novel "Expat" can be read online at: www.deidredare.com