Suite Francais Film

This is  a likable film set in the aftermath of the Fall of France, when the Germans occupied the country. The chief character is a young woman called Lucille who lives with her mother in law, and is lonely because her husband is now a prisoner of war in Germany.  She doesn’t get on with her mother in law, who is a well to do and cold hearted widow.  Lucille feels bullied by her and hates the way that her mother in law is harsh towards their tenants.

 When a German regiment come into the town, Lucille notes that the older women freeze them out, but the young women lonely without their menfolk who are away at war, find it hard to ignore them. Before long, some of the younger women take German soldiers as lovers. Lucille is lonely too but her mother in laws strict watchfulness controls her life. When a German officer is billeted at their house, her mother in law refuses to talk to him, but Lucille who loves music, gradually develops a friendship with him. But in the end, she realises that she cannot ignore the fact that he is German and the occupier of her country.

Suite Francaise is about wartime love and sexual passion and captures very well the loneliness of soldiers away from their homes and loved ones, and the loneliness of the young women whose men have disappeared into Germany or been killed.  And the furtiveness and passion that this gives to their love affairs with the Germans.

I particularly liked it because I like to read of illicit or non-traditional love. Of course married and settled love has many satisfactions but there is a special thrill to love that is not accepted…

Royal Paramours by Dulcie Ashdown

I’ve been reading this book lately, and I can remember reading it many years ago.  It covers the illicit relationships of Britain’s Royals from the medieval era to the time of Edward VIII.
However it misses the later revelations of infidelity from the 1980s onwards.  I’ve greatly enjoyed the stories of Edward VII’s many mistresses, the love affairs of the Stuart Kings and the intense friendships of the Stuart Queens Anne and Mary, both of whom seem to have had close relationships with women as well as with their husbands.
Dulcie Ashdown said, very truly that “normal” conventional respectable married love, is not as interesting as illicit love.  I don’t think that that is always the case but there’s a nugget of truth in it.  We love to read about the loves which should not happen, or about the deceptions and secrets of love outside of marriage, which can result in scandal. We like to see the problems in a love relationship, rather than the boring years of settled married life, which is why love stories usually end at the altar.