cryptic lines

For three years now, I have been pestered, most often good-naturedly and always with an implicit air of charity, from all sides to finally read the most revelatory novel in existence, the most stupefying marriage between fiction and investigative journalism, in short, the greatest book of all times, from here through all eternity. With the courage more befitting an ancient warrior than a sedentiary scientist I have fended off all bullies. I have not even touched "The Da Vinci Code".

Lately, though, I have not been able to avoid being touched by this phenomenon. The movie has just been released and is being promoted senselessly, in France as much as anywhere else. However, with the pride of a tired old mother at the achievements of her favorite daughter, France has shown special vigor in shoving the movie and its female star, Audrey Tautou, up everyone's throat. I read about it in my news magazine, I see it on TV, I hear about it on the radio. There is no escaping, it seems.

Yet, appearances can be deceiving. I still know almost nothing about the story except that it is based on the idea that Jesus and Mary of Magdala were lovers and parents of a child. This hypothesis is not entirely novel, having first been proposed in the Gospel of Philippe around 150AD and recently retold by José Saramago in his stunning "The Gospel according to Jesus Christ". I have thus not been tempted in the least by the book, and I have no intention of seeing the movie.

Here is someone who has done more than me. He has started to read the book but not got very far and has, thanks to the New Yorker's movie review budget, gone to see the film. He was less than enthused but shows himself very capable of articulating his disenchantment in very fine words, words you are not likely to read on an advertisement poster that has Audrey and Tom on it.

As for me, after "Amelie" I can't possibly see any other movie that has Audrey Tautou and her never-changing big-eyed stare of a cute rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car in it and neither one that is so violently overhyped as this one.