Heidi Ellison
Paris Est à Nous
Garbled Message from Parisian Youth
On February 22, Netflix released the film Paris Est à Nous (Paris Is Us), directed by Élisabeth Vogler, which was filmed on a shoestring in Paris against the backdrop of real events that were taking place at the time, among … Read More
Ellsworth Kelly: Windows
A Window on the Paris Years
Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015), one of America’s great abstract painters, is the subject of a small exhibition at the Centre Pompidou. Kelly came to France as a soldier in 1944 and returned to Paris after finishing his art studies in Boston. … Read More
Celle que Vous Croyez
Woman on the Edge
The latest vehicle for French actress Juliette Binoche is Celle que Vous Croyez (Who You Think I Am), directed by Safy Nebbou and based on the novel of the same name (reviewed here) by Camille Laurens. Binoche plays Claire, a 50-year-old literature professor … Read More
The Courtauld Collection
Bringing It All Back Home
With The Courtauld Gallery in London closed for renovation, some of its treasures have been shipped back to where they came from: France, where they are being shown at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in the exhibition “The Courtauld Collection: A Vision … Read More
Astair Restaurant
Panoramic View of World Cuisine
The charming and historic late-18th-century Passage des Panoramas in Paris’s second arrondissement has become a restaurant row of ever-rising quality. It is home to the Michelin-two-star Passage 53 as well as such popular and worthy restaurants as Canard & Champagne, … Read More
Pau
In Search of the Lost Father
How do you make grief visible onscreen? Showing a character crying or looking sad for the length of a feature-length film is, of course, out of the question. A very young French-American filmmaker, Alexandre Leter, who was only 17 when … Read More
Doisneau et la Musique
Move Along: Plenty to See
Inspired by the great love of music of Robert Doisneau (1912-94), one of France‘s beloved humanist photographers, the Cité de la Musique is holding an exhibition of his photos on the theme. A child of the Paris suburbs (Gentilly, to be precise), … Read More
Picky Spring
Good News for Picky Eaters
When a friend had a party recently, she had it catered. The table was laden with round platters filled with what looked like Chinese spring rolls cut in half. Inside the translucent rice wraps, however, were very different ingredients from those … Read More
Tissage-Tressage
Hanging by a Thread
Long disrespected as a “women’s” craft, weaving is coming into its own as an art form, just as ceramics, also long considered a craft rather than an art, has in recent years. “Tissage-Tressage,” a wonderful (and free) exhibition at the … Read More
Vivian Maier: The Color Work
The Snap-Happy Nanny
For such a private person, Vivian Maier took an awful lot of self-portraits. That was one of the impressions I got from the current show of color and black-and-white images by the enigmatic street photographer/nanny now on at Les Douches … Read More