FRANCOISE HARDY RIP

A lass unparalleled

The singer and occasional actress Françoise Hardy passed away this week at the age of 80.

But before we talk about the woman, let’s get the name right.

“Françoise” doesn’t rhyme with “man mars”. That cedilla under the “c” isn’t there for fun. It gives to the letter a quality of “swa”, a hint, one might say, of a hand brushed quickly over silk or a zipper a shade too eagerly pulled down.

And while we’re at it, let’s soften that “a”.  It’s not a flat “fran”, like “pan”,  but more like “fron”. Add the cedilla sound to the “c”, closer to “zwa” than “swa”, and you’re almost there. Fron-zwarz- err.

And of course “Hardy” shouldn’t sound at all like “tardy”. The French don’t know much about the letter “h” but the little they do know, they don’t like. Rather than employing it with precision, they strew it everywhere, hopeful it will occasionally land in the appropriate place.   

(I’ve told the story before about a friend trying to explain to me the contents of an andouille sausage and, specifically, an ingredient called the trou de cul.

“Ze trou de cul…  I am knowing zis,” she said in exasperation. “Is zumzing…Ah, yes. I ham remembering now. Is zer hass-hole!”)

So “’…ardy” – no “h”. And not Ar-dee but Ar-dee. That way, you achieve the vital ellision. Fron-zwarz-ar-dee. Et Voila!

So much for the name. Now the woman.

I don’t think anybody would make extravagant claims about Hrdy’s voice or acting. In neither was she more than adequate. She claimed to derive inspiration from Presley and was a kind of protegé of Johnny Hallyday but her work never approached that of either in intensity.

The British  poet Thom Gunn decreed of Elvis that “Distorting hackneyed words in hackneyed songs/ He turns revolt into a style, prolongs/The impulse to a habit of the time.”  There was no revolt in Françoise, only style incarnate: those vast, sad eyes, and the fringe – all right, bangs, if you insist –  hovering above them like the blade of a guillotine poised to descend: the long straight hair past her shoulders; the cheekbones, high but never haughty: the slim, almost hipless body, to which the most severe suit and jeans of tightest cut clung with no hint of a wrinkle. “There Is No Substitute” assert the makers of Porsche. Well, every claim should acknowledge at least the possibility of an exception, and here is one such. "Now boast thee, death, in thy possession lies/A lass unparalleled." *

*Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare.