Le Nouveau Monde

Le Nouveau Monde is a 1995 French film directed by Alain Corneau about post World War II France.

Tagline: One American soldier would change their lives...forever.

Plot

This film is half in French, half in English. The story is set in France in the 50's, the post-war period to which the French refer as the American Occupation.

French President Charles de Gaulle forced the American bases to close, but until that time as this movie displays, American soldiers were occupiers. Their presence was resented by many, flaunting as the soldiers did American material culture, Coke, Levis, Schwinns, bought from the PX, a store to which the French were forbidden entry.

Every American in this film is big and healthy while the French are emaciated and somber. The Americans listen to Buddy Holly, the French prefer John Coltrane. The Americans drive large shiny cars, the French ride old delivery vans. The Americans speak in English to everyone, oblivious to whether they are understood or not.

Alicia Silverstone plays one of these strapping carefree Americans, critical of wobbly French bicycles and refusing to swim in a lake for fear of catching polio. One sex scene, filmed in the no-big-deal typical fashion, resolves with Silverstone wiping semen off her hand and lips with antiseptic disdain. But not everything is a cheap shot at Americans: there's a fantastic scene where a rival French girl makes a pathetic and ill-timed plea to Silverstone's new boyfriend. Silverstone reacts with an incredulous: "Shut up!"

The Americans eventually learn they must leave France to face the "communist peril" on her own. In the final scene smallish French athletes walk in a parade to be suddenly barnstormed by American cowboys on horseback. Cheerleaders, among them Silverstone, and leather-helmeted football players flow out of flashy finned convertibles to play an exhibition game of football as the townspeople look on.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114009/