Mamenka

My name is Olga. I am your mother. Ta mère. Ta mamenka.

Remember her first letter, your first rendez-vous at Place Saint Sulpice? You couldn't beleive this beautiful, chain-smoking woman was your mother. She wore a silken, double-piece suit and a black turban by Jean Blanchot. You met seven times in secret. She asked you many question, she had trouble answering yours. Sometimes she was peniless, sometimes she invited you. Where did the money come from? She was always elegant and men followed her with their eyes.



Heddy Lamarr and Charles Boyer in "Algiers" (1938). Directed by John Cromwell, produced by Walter Wanger. It's the American remake of Pépé-le-Moko, dubbed "the official instalation of romance in French avant-garde films featuring marginals, loosers, bad boys, filles de joie, alcohol... Cafard (depression) La mythologie de l'échec... Populist poetry" (Jacques Siclair)