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I got back from Montreal just ahead of the thunderstorm. My French is very, very rusty - horrible, really, for someone in college who was initially registered as a French major. I always mix up "eyes" (les yeux) and "eggs" (oeufs); and after the laughter dies down at the breakfast table I hesitate on trying to say anything else.

Whenever I go to Montreal it's hard not to think of the wonderful coming of age (and semi-autobiographical) film by Lea Pool, "Set Me Free." Set in 1960s Montreal, it focuses on Hanna, the teenage daughter of an unhappy working-class couple (expatriate Jewish poet and beautiful Catholic prom queen). She tentatively explores her sexuality with a classmate and develops a huge crush on her teacher.

Wandering into a movie theater one day, Hanna develops a fixation on Godard's "Vivre sa vie" and models much of her behavior on the female lead, the doomed wife-turned-prostitute, but glamorously imperturbable, Nana.

Vivre sa vie ("My life to live"), opens with a quote from Montaigne, "lend yourself to others but give yourself to yourself". Another translation of the quote goes --"The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself."