Provence revealed to France admirer as cultural perfection, subtitles and all

Thanks to the miracle of Netflix, I spent last weekend in Provence without ever leaving Cobb Manor.

Netflix, for the uninformed among you, is a movie mail system that sends three DVDs at a time from an endless list. My list or “queue” has always leaned to the French, subtitled genre, much to the consternation of Blue Eyes who is, in fact, French.

I have loved all things French since my first day of junior high school when the language teacher (name long forgotten) pulled down the map of France. I made a silent vow to visit France, if not live there.

The sounds of the language have always been music to my ears, although I found it largely unintelligible despite about nine years of French classes.

That was before I shook hands with the paralyzing fear of flying which has kept me rooted, gratefully, to the ground. To avoid those eight hours of terror flying cross the Atlantic, I chose instead to splurge on Netflix.

It started with “Year in Provence,” the movie portrayal of real-life Peter and Annie Mayle, who fled the London rat race for life in a 200-year-old stone cottage in the south of France. The two-volume set explores the local customs, from the correct way to hire workmen (an international problem) to growing grapes for wine to the intricacies of boules, a peculiar form of lawn bowling. Curiously, there is little mention of how they can afford all of this.

The casting of the local characters is perfect. They have to be real carpenters and stone masons. Somehow, the Mayles prosper and survive and we root for them against every plumbing, carpentry and unwelcome guest problem.

Once that two-volume set was consumed, I moved onto “My Father’s Glory” and “My Mother’s Castle,” both directed by Yves Robert and based on the memoirs of French playwright Marcel Pagnol. Vincent Canby of The New York Times called “Glory” “a film memoir of almost dumbfounding sweetness … It doesn’t avoid or soften harsh realities: They simply don’t exist.” It seems like all scenes were shot through a gauze filter.

I would gladly swap my uneventful (except for all those fires) childhood for Pagnol’s. The vacations in the hills of Provence could not be more perfect, from the meals to the hikes through the woods and, of course, another few bouts of boules. The young Marcel falls so hard for the adorable Isabelle that his angelic mother asks, “If girls make you do that now, what’ll it be in years to come?”

Like Marcel cares. He is lost. Just like the rest of us.

By the end of this four-French-movie orgy, I was speaking French, even though my sentences were limited to what little I know of the Marseillaise.

With Netflix, I have a virtually endless train of French, subtitled masterpieces, including the criminal masterpiece “Rififi,” which I have seen at least a dozen times.

The more I watch, the less I want to fly to France. Maybe someday I will be anesthetized enough to go to Provence, maybe play a little boules.

Then, I can switch to Italian movies.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.