Pierre Bonneau was in Paris teaching a full immersion language course for the University of Arizona when he got an e-mail from his wife back in Tucson. It contained an advertisement for a French teacher at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School and a brief note: “The kids and I have thought about this — you need to apply here.”

Mr. Bonneau, 46, who has a master’s degree in French education, was hired for the post. Three weeks later, in August of 2009, he’d sold his Tucson house and moved to the Island with his wife, Lisa, and their two sets of twins.

Students at the high school have had a standing joke that being French teacher at the regional is a bit like being the Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor at Harry Potter’s Hogwarts: no one seemed to last much more than a year in the post. “My current honors four class hasn’t had the same teacher two years running,” he says. That meant he and his fellow new hire, Ben Sprayregan, had to restructure the department, getting a feel for where the students were with the language and setting consistent goals for the program.

One of the first items on Mr. Bonneau’s agenda was to institute an annual French immersion experience that would allow students to use what they were learning. “The idea of studying a language is to use it,” he says, “but here on the Island there are not many opportunities to do that.” It typically takes two years to organize such a trip, “and because of the turnover in staff, none of the students currently at the school have ever had a chance to go on one.”

Next spring that will change, when Mr. Bonneau leads Les Troubadours, as the French-learners style themselves, to Paris, Avignon and the Côte d’Azur. The following year he will lead the group to his home province, Quebec. “The idea is we have one trip that is expensive, and the following year, a cheaper option,” he said. This year’s trip requires extensive fund-raising, so Les Troubadours have planned a number of fun events, including a French film night this Sunday (Nov. 21) at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center in Vineyard Haven.

Two films will be shown, for a modest $5 admission each. French fare will be on sale at intermission. The first movie, at the child-friendly hour of 4 p.m., is the popular animated film, Ratatouille, but shown in French with English subtitles. “It’s an American movie that depicts a typically French environment,” Mr. Bonneau says. Hearing the lines spoken in French by French actors will add a different, enriching dimension that he believes both kids and adults will enjoy. At 6:30 p.m., the second film will be Le Fils d’Epicier (The Grocer’s Son) which was a huge hit at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival. “Everyone asked me to show it again,” says the festival’s director, Richard Paradise. Its theme, of quirky relationships in a rural community, resonated with its Vineyard audience.

Mr. Bonneau believes French cinema offers a valuable glimpse into the workings of another culture. Even the way the films are constructed offers hints of difference in world view. “American movies buckle everything up with a neat ending,” he says, while French cinema more often offers a slice of life that leaves viewers to draw their own conclusions.

Mr. Bonneau himself did not learn English until high school in Quebec, so he knows what his students are going through as they struggle to master a new language. “It’s hard to believe you can live in North America and not really be exposed to English, but we weren’t,” he says, recalling that the newspapers, television and entire neighborhood were French. “There was no need for English unless you moved out of the community.”

Mr. Bonneau, whose undergraduate degree was in business, first came to the U.S. to help his mother in a business that valued old stocks and bonds, researching their value as securities or as works of graphic art. When his mother retired he went back to college to qualify as a French instructor. He met his wife, also a student educator, while hiking in the Arizona mountains. Lisa Bonneau is now teaching language arts at the West Tisbury school, which the twins, aged eight and 11, attend. The family is buying a home in Vineyard Haven. “So as you can tell, we’re here to stay.”

Gazette contributor Geraldine Brooks is an author who lives in Vineyard Haven.