A rainy Friday night in Lyon

11/10/2014 09:02

It’s Friday night, so I head off with my friends to my favourite cinema in Lyon:  UGC at Cité Ciné Internationale.  I’ve been waiting for the film, Gone Girl [1]to come out after having been enthralled by the book.  This cinema is one of the most reliablefor showing latest release English language films in VO (version originale - undubbed). The French love to watch English and American movies but have this unhealthy obsession with dubbing anything non-French, so it’s always a pleasure to go along to Cité Ciné to watch my favourite actors sounding like themselves.

Recently, I made the mistake of playing a DVD, forgetting to change the audio to English. Imagine my surprise when I heard Jonathan Rhees Meyers [2]speaking flawless French.  His French was much, much better than Helen Mirren’s in 100 Foot Journey!  And of course, I personally think he is much more visually appealing, but that’s just me.  Of course, I quickly realized that he wasn’t completely bilingual…he’d simply been dubbed!

Another reason I like this particular cinema is that they have a café and bar on the ground floor which makes it a great place to meet your friends before or after the film.  Many cinemas do sell food and drink (at ridiculously inflated prices) but most don’t have anywhere you can go and sit and relax before or after the film.  The staff are usually friendly (again, not always the case in many cinemas around Lyon), and are very focused on customer service. I do think they are mindful that they have lots of Anglo Saxon patrons  who are more than a little “exigent” when it comes to good customer service.

After the film we decided to go for a drink and as it was late (11.00pm), all of the bars and restaurants were closed including the one at the cinema.  We therefore headed off to Les Coulisses, a bar/club located just down the long wind tunnel which is the Cité Internationale.  Les Coulisses is a trendy bar with an identity crisis. It calls itself a “pub discotheque.” If you check TripAdvisor, you will find a number of mixed reviews for this club branché (hip club).  I had been to Les Coulisses a number of times, and other than the extremely loud music which forces you to sit in the smokers’ sections (there are 2 – one at the front and one at the rear of the restaurant)  I have always found the staff extremely friendly and attentive and the food above average. 

On this particular Friday night however, things were a tad slow.  The inclement weather was doing its best to deter the Lyonnais from doing their Friday night thing, or at least they weren’t doing at Cité Internationale.  Which meant that the gorilla- like bouncer at the entrance had little to do but harass the odd customer or two who deigned to want to enter this hallowed establishment.   After having finished our drinks and paid our bill we tarried a while just at the entrance of the restaurant saying our goodbyes.  The bouncer, seeing his opportunity to flex his twitching muscles, told us to move on as we were blocking the entrance, thereby blocking the way for the 100s of other patrons who were clamoring to enter the place!  I guess bouncers are the same the world over.