“La Femme Vert,” Mason proclaimed after taking a long sip from his drink. “It’s the latest film by French comedy director Anne Moreau. Her work may be all in another language but it still reads as hilarious.”
“Oh, foreign film… cool,” Janette trailed, trying her best to hide her unenthused face from Mason. Maybe she should have been paying more attention to Mason’s little chat about the film.
They took their seats in a very sparsely populated theatre. Only one other couple sat in there and they talked through the entire preshow in fluent French. Their language grated on her ears and she slumped in her chair, knowing the movie was going to be groan worthy.
It began with a few foreign production logos and music being sung in French and Janette strained to understand the lyrics but couldn’t. They were in a completely separate language from her own. The opening shots were pretty and a few visual jokes were made that Mason laughed at but Janette saw subtitles and sighed, rolling her eyes.
Then a woman began talking and she blinked, a very vague understanding of what she was saying coming to her. Almost like she’d been taught French at one point and failed to upkeep it or keep learning.
Oh, wait, duh she’d taken French class up to grade ten. Of course, she still vaguely recalled a couple phrases and words. How silly of her.
As she sipped on her soda and shook her head while all her hair began to lighten in colour until it was bright blonde. More scenes began to play and her struggle with the subtitles felt like it was lessening. She wasn’t just vaguely understanding their words, she was understanding the actors words. She actually burst out laughing as a quick joke was delivered, amusement flooding her body at the delivery.
Of course, how silly of her, she hadn’t stopped taking French classes in grade ten. She was still in French class at a university level. She was already fluent in the language but being bilingual took constant upkeep.
Her laughter turned into a snort she had to cover up as and her body frame changed into a more slender and petite one. She was skinny and tall now with her curves shrinking down to match her frame. Her breasts and hips had a very appealing look to them, not too big on her frame and helping to emphasize her figure. Sure she didn’t have massive knockers but most guys were pleased with the size anyway.
It was at that moment that her linguistic skills seemed to flip on their head. Another joke crossed the screen involving the lead actress running across the road towards her crush and being hit by a car. As this happened Janette’s thoughts changed to French. Her brain became rewired as her native tongue shifted from French to English. She didn’t even notice it had happened, and it didn’t change much in the way of her personality, but it had changed.
As she laughed her clothing shifted to frame her new figure. What guy didn’t want a slender girl with a thin and curvy waist? She certainly loved the way she looked. She actually sort of looked like the actress onscreen. Her shirt’s fabric changed until it was loose and comfortable, a trendy scarf wormed its way around her neck, and her pants rose away from her feet leaving a bit more skin around her ankles showing.
She was having a riot with the film by that point, laughing before Mason was at all the jokes. It made sense, she could hear the jokes in their native tongue, her native tongue, it was so much better than an English movie. English was so hard and she was still struggling to learn it. She found it so cute that Mason had found a film like this for her, something she could enjoy while in America for this exchange program. She felt so at home and open, not even noticing her English deteriorating little by little until she had to think to structure sentences properly.
Her memories shifted the more she laughed at the film. She was from coastal France, her parents owned a small seaside town deli, and she had dreams of one day being a novelist. Of course she needed a fallback career so she’d taken up all sorts of university courses for teaching, hoping she could at least work with literature even if she couldn’t publish it as a career. She’d taken this offer to spend a semester abroad at first opportunity, wanting to add new experiences to her life to improve her writing.
Living in a country with English as the dominant language was much more difficult than anyone could have imagined. Mason didn’t even know how much this date meant to her, the fact he had picked up on her distress and taken her to a movie that made her feel a little less homesick was just so sweet and thoughtful. When she thought about it she felt her heart swoon over this handsome American boy.
When the movie finally stopped, Mason turned to Janette to ask her what she thought and had to do a double take. In Janette’s place was a tall and beautiful blonde girl in quite fashionable attire. She had a thin frame and slender womanly limbs and she had a certain foreign feel to her.
“Oh, that was… how do you say… wonderful!” She exclaimed in a thick French accent, struggling a little with her English. He could see the gears turning in her head as she structured sentences together and it filled him with attraction. She was thinking in a whole other language he couldn’t even comprehend. Despite her struggles with English he knew she was a very intelligent woman. His heart started pounding with attraction while she spoke about the movie, having to pause and find the right word and translation every few seconds.
“This meant so much to me,” she told him with her cute smile growing shy and sweet. “I have been missing home very much.”
“Y-you’re welcome,” he stammered before Janette leant over and gave him a sweet kiss on the cheek. His face was ablaze and his heart pounding even more. He suddenly realized he was really into French girls after that moment.