Speak Low

Do not lump me in with the vastness.

According to actress Helen Mirren, "The vast American public will not accept films with subtitles." That's why she was told to use accented English to play a French character in "The Hundred-Foot Journey," despite being fluent in French.

Today's article in the Washington Post about subtitles pointed out how the US gets stereotyped as a country that refuses to read dialogue, so fewer foreign language films arrive on our shores.

You know what they say: if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

Not me. After a stop at 8 1/2 for white pizza (as a friend who moved to food-centric Portland told me, not a single pizza there comes anywhere close to pie from 8 1/2) and watching the parade of to-go orders (including a restaurateur's wife) being claimed in rapid succession, I headed directly to the nearest foreign film for reading time.

The Criterion was showing "Phoenix," a German film about Nelly, a Jewish singer and concentration camp survivor, who was left for dead with a bullet to the face not long before the camps were liberated.

After reconstructive surgery and the rebuilding of Germany begins, she sets out to find her beloved husband, despite a friend warning her that he was the one who betrayed her to the Nazis.

What besotted woman wants to believe that?

The movie was a slow burner, unfolding a suspenseful - almost Hitchcock-like- story after Nelly (unrecognizable after surgery) locates her husband, who hatches a plan to pass this woman off as his wife and claim her inheritance, a scheme she goes along with in hopes of discovering that he still loves her.

Atmosphere, melancholy and an enormous sense of loss permeated the beautifully shot film that just about destroyed the small audience with its achingly unexpected ending.

No one does sad quite like the Germans.

And you know what? That film wouldn't have packed the same wallop in English. We needed to read subtitles while hearing German spoken for the full effect. I have to say, it was my first time hearing Cole Porter sung in German, but it felt right.

I just don't get it. What's the hang up about reading while you watch a movie? Am I wrong in thinking it's only non-readers who avoid subtitled films?

You could say that it's just the devoted reader in me, but it's also that distinctively un-American take on storytelling that we get from foreign films.

I can still remember how moved I was when I first saw the poignant "Life is Beautiful." By the time it came to the Byrd if had been dubbed in English. It wasn't the same film.

Okay, maybe I do just love to read. You know what won the Internet for me today? A meme of a pink dress-clad housewife vacuuming the floor with the caption, "Anyone who has time to clean is not reading nearly enough."

Amen, sister.

If you ask me, the vast American public who avoids subtitled films is missing out on some pretty amazing movies, not to mention things like the entire French Film Festival. Of course, they may also have cleaner houses than I do.

I can live with that.