GATSBY: The French Connection

Carey Mulligan is Daisy Buchanan in Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of The Great Gatsby 

The Great Gatsby is much on my mind - I just finished rereading F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic last night - but I wanted to connect with Accidental Blog's Dreaming of France meme so  allow me to make my French Connection. It's a tenuous thread but here me out.

There's a scene in Chapter 5 after Gatsby and Daisy have reunited over tea at Nick's cottage. Gatsby's taken them on the tour of his mansion, Daisy's seen his spectacular shirt collection, all the clippings he's saved over the years. Gatsby has a cryptic phone conversation and Daisy is standing by the window looking at the sky. 

The rain was still falling, but the darkness had parted in the west, and there was a pink and golden billow of foamy clouds above the sea. 
“Look at that,” she whispered, and then after a moment: “I’d like to just get one of those pink clouds and put you in it and push you around.”

Je t'aime that image and you have to wonder if Boris Viann loved it too, at least the concept of it, if not the particulars. Was the French writer inspired by the idea of floating about in the clouds when he created the cloud car depicted in Michel Gondry's screen adaptation of Mood Indigo (L'ecume Des jours) ? 

Audry Tautou and Romain Duris in Mood Indigo (L'ecume des Jours)

While the cloud car isn't pink, this image was the first thing I thought of when I re-read those lines from The Great Gatsby. So that's my French Connection for Dreaming of France. Now that I've got you here, check out this new trailer for Mood Indigo. This one has subtitles!

 Oh, if you're interested I've got a separate spot where I house all my Great Gatsby posts.