Vocabulaire: Brokeback Mountain

First there was this funny trailer about a guy describing the penguin movie to this woman. The penguin movie in French is called La Marche des Empereurs. So she thinks initially he's talking about Napoleon (cut to her picturing Napoleon marching through the wilderness). But no, he says, it's in the snow (cut to Napoleon in snowy landscape). And there are a lot of them (cut to lots of Napoleons marching through the snow). And they slide on their bellies, and sometimes a seal eats one of them, and they pass their eggs back and forth... with the increasingly funny visuals of what she's picturing. The tagline was something like, "Some movies have to be seen to be understood." I didn't get the joke until A explained to me what the title of the penguin movie was in French.

Another trailer contained the phrase "pauvre mec" ('poor guy'), which A said is perhaps one of the worst things a girl can say to a guy: pathetic, loser, pitiful.

On to the main feature....

tes vieux		your folks (literally, your old ones)
un noeud		a knot
un trajet		a commute
un rayon		a department, as in a store
un naze		loser (but "je suis naze," 'I'm exhausted')
moche		ugly
épuisant		tiring
à un de ses quatre		one of these days
virer		to throw someone out, to fire someone
emballer		to pack
bosser		to work
bouffer		to eat
rabioter		to cut, as someone's pay
"fais gaffe"		"look out, be careful"
"putain de X"		"f***ing X"
"X on l'emmerde"		"f*** X"
"bordel"		"goddamnit"
"plutôt crever"		"not on your f***ing life" (literally, (I'd) rather die)
"j'en ai ras-le-bol"		"I've had it, I'm fed up"
"j'en ai marre"		"I've had it, I'm fed up"

It was fun doing the post-film debriefing with A, since he teaches English to French speakers and is therefore very knowledgeable about all sorts of expressions in French.