or: Is An American Film In French Considered Foreign?

Over the years, I’ve watched my fair share of foreign films with English subtitles.

The movie I watched on Friday night with three of my Mauritian female friends was technically a foreign film (it was American) and it also had English subtitles at times (during the songs).

It had been a considerable period of time (over three years at the least) since any of these friends had been to the cinema. Mostly when these women go somewhere, their children are always nearby. Except when they go to work.

We had already decided on Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again since we all like music and a few of us had seen the first one.

I had read the reviews and already knew we weren’t watching an Award Winner however with Meryl, Cher, Pierce, Colin and ABBA involved, it should still be entertaining.

And we were going to be watching it in French.

That added to the entretainment.

To see / hear Pierce’s French-speaking double speak in French and then the ‘real’ Pierce sing ABBA in English was interesting. The subtitles for the songs were in French.

It reminded me of watching some of Terminator 2 dubbed into Spanish. The only part they kept original was Arnie’s famous line “hasta la vista, baby”. His Spanish voice was interesting too…

Anyway, it wasn’t necessary to have a brilliant understanding of French either since the movie is quite over the top. Between that and the English songs, I had the story figured out though may have missed the finer points of some of the jokes.

Except for Pierce singing.

* Thanks to ABBA for the title to this post.