Her Pen Pal (2021 TV Movie)

Joshua Sasse: Jacques Artis

Photos 

Quotes 

• Jacques Artis : Well, you know, my father used to say that champagne is to the French what duct tape is to the Americans.

  [He and Victoria say together] 

  Jacques Artis : It fixes everything.

• Victoria Lewis : [arriving at Jacques' family home]  When you said chateau, I didn't know that was French for palace.

  Jacques Artis : It's just a country home.

  Victoria Lewis : For who? Louis XIV? You are now legitimately a fairy-tale prince.

  Jacques Artis : Yeah, but I didn't need a chateau for that.

• Victoria Lewis : Holy crepe! This is amazing. How's your croque monsieur?

  Jacques Artis : Parfait. It's the national dish of the French.

  Victoria Lewis : Got to love a country where the national dish is a fried ham sandwich, and a fried ham sandwich with an egg is its wife.

  Jacques Artis : Croque monsieur, croque madame. That's funny.

• Jacques Artis : Salut.

  Victoria Lewis : Hi. You're late.

  Jacques Artis : No, I'm French.

  Victoria Lewis : Oh, and that's an excuse?

  Jacques Artis : Well, the French do everything fashionably, especially being late, but you're in a rush somewhere?

  Victoria Lewis : No, but I do have a schedule.

  Jacques Artis : Maybe you shouldn't. Instead, take a break. Be a flaneur. You know this, flaneur? It's a French thing. It means somebody who strolls just to experience, who wanders with no purpose.

  Victoria Lewis : That sounds kind of terrifying.

  Jacques Artis : Well, you used to love to wander, remember. When I came to visit, we spent whole days just getting lost.

  Victoria Lewis : Yeah, but you grow up. You get more goal oriented.

  Jacques Artis : Okay, well, for our next goal on the Tour de France, I'm gonna take you to my favorite patisserie.

  Victoria Lewis : Oh, well, if you'd led with patisserie, I would've overlooked lateness.

• Jacques Artis : Now, this is my favorite part in the whole of Montmartre. Le mur des je t'aime.

  Victoria Lewis : The wall of 'I love you.'

  Jacques Artis : Mm-hmm. Two artists created this wall as a lasting monument to love. They've written 'I love you' 311 times in 250 languages.

  Victoria Lewis : What are the red splashes for?

  Jacques Artis : Well, they symbolize the pieces of a broken heart.

  Victoria Lewis : Why have a broken heart here?

  Jacques Artis : Maybe, because to love fully, you have to embrace a broken heart.

  Victoria Lewis : It's beautiful.

  Jacques Artis : Mm. I think so.

• Victoria Lewis : But, you know, you get older and you find yourself alone, sitting in your car eating a dinner of fries dipped in a milkshake five nights a week, and you start to question the definition of success.

  Jacques Artis : You're lonely?

  Victoria Lewis : No, I'm happy by myself. I pride myself on being a strong, independent woman. I can open jars and assemble furniture alone, but it does make me sad to cook for one. What about you? Do you cook like this when you're on your own?

  Jacques Artis : Yeah, of course. I mean, I enjoy it. But I like to think I'm worth the effort.

• Victoria Lewis : You know what's strange? I'm here and yet I already miss it.

  Jacques Artis : That's because you've become a Parisian.

  Victoria Lewis : I've been here for six days, I'm hardly a Parisian.

  Jacques Artis : Being a Parisian isn't about living in Paris, it's about coming alive in Paris.

  Victoria Lewis : Well, then I guess I'm an honorary Parisian.

  Jacques Artis : Exactly.

  Victoria Lewis : Tu me manques, Paris. That means, 'I'll miss you Paris,' right?

  Jacques Artis : Um, sort of. 'Tu me manques' in French doesn't mean 'I miss you.' 'Tu me manques' means 'you are missing from me.'

• Victoria Lewis : My old letters? You saved them?

  Jacques Artis : Of course I saved them.

  Victoria Lewis : I poured my heart out to you. I told you things I never told anyone else.

  Jacques Artis : Me too.

  Victoria Lewis : These letters are just a place I could truly be myself.

  Jacques Artis : You know, you broke my heart.

  Victoria Lewis : Well, you broke mine, too, but we were just kids.

  Jacques Artis : What does that mean?

  Victoria Lewis : That means that we were 17, and I was there and you were here, and I just didn't see how we could ever be together. You know, I started to wonder if we were just puppy love or a fairy tale.

  Jacques Artis : But when did you stop believing in fairy tales?

  Victoria Lewis : I'm not sure. Maybe when I felt like it was time to grow up, which was around the same time I wondered if our love was actually real.

  Jacques Artis : Isn't all love real?

  Victoria Lewis : Well, maybe that's the problem, that it gets too real.

• Jacques Artis : I'm sorry. I was wrong. I thought that if you love something, you set it free. Now, I see you can set it free and hold it close at the same time and I want to do that. I don't want to give up. I want to fight.

  Victoria Lewis : Hopefully for me and not with me.

  Jacques Artis : But I'm here and you're there. How does this work?

  Victoria Lewis : I'm not sure. But I know the way I feel about you is real. It was always real. And I don't know what I'm doing or what we're doing, or what we are, or what our final destination will be, but I wanna wonder with you. And if my impassioned speech didn't convince you, then think of all the money we'd save on stamps.

  [they start to slow dance] 

  Victoria Lewis : Tu me manques.

  Jacques Artis : Not anymore.

  [they kiss] 

• Jacques Artis : [standing on Pont des Arts, the bridge that had been covered in locks]  I know it was supposed to be romantic, but for me it was the opposite, you know? Because love is not a lock. The heart is not something that should be unlocked. You don't need to give someone a key if it's already opened.

  Victoria Lewis : You wrote something like that in a letter, one of your last letters to me.

  Jacques Artis : I remember. I was trying to explain why I didn't fight for us, because I believe if you love something, don't lock it, you set it free. And if it comes back to you, then you know it was meant to be.

• Jacques Artis : 'I have learned to live. How to be in the world and of the world and not just stand and watch. I will never, ever again run away from life or from love either.' It's Audrey Hepburn in 'Sabrina.'

• Victoria Lewis : I built a business, a brand. To give that up to chase some unknown dream, I'd be setting myself up for failure.

  Jacques Artis : No, I mean, only if you perceive it as a failure. I mean, take the Arc de Triomphe. Everybody thinks that it's a monument to triumph, but no one realizes the real triumph was in its construction. It took 30 years to build. The real triumph is not in the final product, it's in the journey. What I'm trying to say is, it's not about success. It's... it's about what we learn.

  Victoria Lewis : I like that. Even if the analogy is kind of random.

  Jacques Artis : It's not so random.

  [they turn to look at the Arc de Triomphe nearby] 

  Victoria Lewis : How are these giant architectural marvels constantly right in front of my face and I never see them?

  Jacques Artis : It's cause you are too busy looking at me.