6
ROMANCE
L’amour ne meurt jamais de besoin, mais souvent d’indigestion.
(Love never dies of want, but often of indigestion.)*
NINON DE LENCLOS, SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY
WRITER AND COURTESAN
Amour glamour
ROMANCE IS, of course, a matter of personal taste. One person’s favourite love song will send another diving for earplugs. Couples who met during a blizzard probably find it highly romantic to spend the occasional evening sitting with their feet in buckets of ice cream. That’s the great thing about romance. It’s completely personal.
Most people, however, seem to agree on one thing—that Paris is inherently romantic. There’s something about the combination of riverbank sunsets, snug restaurants, effortless elegance and affordable Champagne that strikes a chord in almost everyone’s heart.
When we look at Robert Doisneau’s famous photo of a couple snatching a kiss on a Paris street, something subconscious convinces us all that if we could only be walking past the Hôtel de Ville right now, we too would feel the urgent need to grab our loved one and clamp ourselves to their lips. Like the tousled young guy in the photo, we might even take the cigarette out of our mouth to do so.
Doisneau snapped hundreds of Paris street scenes, some of them impromptu, others less so, but it’s no coincidence that ‘The Lovers’ is his best-known photo. Their clinch seems to sum up the city in one primal gesture.
It doesn’t matter that the picture was posed—Doisneau took it in 1950 as part of a photo report for Life magazine, and pragmatically chose the Hôtel de Ville as a backdrop that would be easily recognizable to foreigners. So it’s art, not life, but who cares? It is an image created by someone who loved the city and what it stood for, and it’s brilliantly acted, too—the male model is squashing his nose against his partner’s face so passionately that she hangs almost breathless in his arms.
And the background to the photo is perfect—the heat of the embrace is set against the dull, damp weather and the disapproving glance of a lady passer-by (who was not posing), while behind the couple, an office worker, buttoned up tight in his overcoat, a beret clamped over his knitted brow, suddenly seems to have realized what is missing from his life—romance. The lovers, meanwhile, turn their backs on the dullness around them and live the Parisian dream. And we all want to be right there, right now.
What is it about Paris that does this to people? Is it the sheer density of kissing couples per square kilometre, or the almost infinite number of viewpoints where you can stand with your loved one and gaze out across glittering lights? Or is it simply expectation—you’re almost obliged to feel romantic in Paris the same way that you laugh before a famous comedian even opens his or her mouth?
Well, yes to most of those rhetorical questions, but they aren’t the only reasons for the city’s success as a venue for canoodling.
The city that can’t fail
Like a well-chilled glass of Champagne,** Paris is almost always capable of hitting the mark, whatever your tastes in matter of the heart.
To get us in the mood for romance, all most of us need is some period décor (interior or exterior), soft lighting, tasteful music (which is why, for me, the accordion is a no-no) and time to stroll, sit or loll while exchanging mots d’amour with the love of your life (or of that evening).
You also need to feel classy. A romantic evening or weekend doesn’t work if there’s anything fake or sordid about it, and genuine class is something that runs through Paris’s veins. Everything about the city feels authentic, not just a bunch of elements packaged together and marketed at the tourist hordes. The waiters are real, rather than seasonal student workers, and their aprons are the same shape and size as they have been since the nineteenth century. The restaurants aren’t converted warehouses—they’re traditional eating-houses, often decorated exactly as they were in the Belle Époque, or the Années Folles of the 1920s, and probably frequented by as many locals as visitors because the food will be genuinely French. Your dinner may not always be candlelit, but no matter—it will feel as if the candles are there, glowing like the flames of your love (and in French, even cheesy metaphors like that don’t sound hackneyed). In short, your romantic soirée in Paris won’t be just a night out on the town, it will be an occasion, a tête-à-tête. After all, Champagne is practically local produce.
And these essential ingredients are available all over the city, at places that have been listed in endless guidebooks. What’s more, the best-known sites usually work a treat. The Sacré Coeur on its hilltop is a wonderful viewpoint; a bench on the riverbank can afford a timeless view of Notre-Dame; and when the Eiffel Tower starts its shimmering light display,*** the couples on the balcony of the Palais de Chaillot at Trocadéro can’t help but go ‘ooh’ and snuggle just a little closer.
But the best-known lovers’ dallying spot has to be the Pont des Arts, the pedestrian bridge that crosses the Seine at the eastern end of the Louvre. It has been a romantic meeting place ever since it was built in the 1980s, and was officially consecrated as such in the clinching episode of Sex in the City, when whatsername, the spindly blond narrator, finally gets it together with whatsisname, the tall, stuffy rich guy.
For couples wanting to gaze at romantic Paris, it’s an ideal location. First of all, the gaps between the slats in the boardwalk mean that anyone with vertigo will cling more than affectionately to their partner as they look down into the rushing Seine. Then there is the absence of traffic—no danger of getting run over as you kiss. And, from the centre of the bridge, the 360-degree view is perfect. To the east, there is the pinnacle of Notre-Dame, the Pont Neuf and the weeping willows on the triangular square du Vert Galant (literally: Lusty
