For Christmas I received from our French neighbors a two-CD set of songs by Jeanne Moreau. I said that I didn’t know she was a singer and they assured me she was. And then I remembered one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite films, François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim. Jim, the tall, lanky Frenchman, picks up his guitar and plays a catchy song about a femme fatale that Moreau sings. You immediately understand why he and Jules, who is sitting in a nearby chair, have both fallen in love with her.
The tune has stayed with me all these decades, as have some of the words – “Elle est retombee dans mes bras” – which I sometimes sing as I head off on my bike rides. (There is a memorable scene of Moreau riding a bicycle.) But I never knew the title. Scanning the list of songs on the back of the collection, I found nothing with the words “dans mes bras.”
The other day I opened the box and played the first CD. And immediately I recognized the tune, and then the words, of the first song, the title of which was Le Tourbillon (The Whirlwind). I had been gifted a memory from my youth.
