Road to Elsewhere, Excerpt #15: Hot for Professeure

What Isabelle Huppert taught me about sexual allure and the importance of respect.

OVERESTIMATING MY ACCOMPLISHMENTS in two semesters of college French, I signed up for an intermediate class at the Alliance Française in Paris. It was held in an ugly, 60s-design academic building around the corner from my dormitory, and I slinked in there in fear. I needn’t have worried; my fellow academics were simply biding their time until they coul…