Nick Hammond
The Cunning Little Vixen
The vixen (Adriana Kucerova) converses with the badger (Slawomir Szychowiak). Photo: Opéra national de Paris/Christian Leiber Most writers and composers tend to create their greatest works in their early years, but Czech composer Leoš Janáček wrote his most memorable and … Read More
La Tête en Friche
Jean Becker’s new movie, La Tête en Friche (based on Marie-Sabine Roger’s book of the same name), is in so many ways hopelessly outdated. It portrays village life as it was represented on film in the 1930s and 1940s: gentle, … Read More
Please, Don’t Come In
Just because books are old doesn’t mean they are worth thousands of euros. Photo: Nick Hammond In an age where so many independent businesses, even in Paris, are being overtaken by chain stores, I recently visited a small bookshop in … Read More
Les Invités de Mon Père
Director Anne Le Ny has the confidence and chutzpah to deal with a number of broad themes and moral ambiguities in her second movie, Les Invités de Mon Père (My Father’s Guest), ranging from problems of immigration and cultural difference … Read More
Billy Budd
The British warship the HMS Indomitable prepares to attack a French vessel. Photo © Opéra National de Paris/ C. Leiber There is something deliciously ironic about being seated in Paris’s Bastille opera house watching an opera set on a fiercely … Read More
Talking with Sartre
Heaven and Hell: Others and Interviewers
The recent flurry of books and exhibitions on Jean-Paul Sartre and his circle shows no sign of abating. After Carole Seymour-Jones’s revelatory biography of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, A Dangerous Liaison, John Gerassi’s Talking with Sartre brings us the … Read More
L’Arnacœur
Although the chief joy of spending time in Paris is experiencing and trying to understand French life with all its wonders and quirks, there are moments when it is impossible to escape feelings of profound cultural difference. And I must … Read More
La Reine des Pommes
The dearth of interesting-sounding French movies playing in Paris last week led me to take pot luck and choose to see the next French film being shown in the cinema I was passing one evening. And am I glad that … Read More
Césars
“A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house.” So goes the biblical dictum. Well, not any longer, because Jacques Audiard’s Un Prophète has just received the ultimate accolade in its own country, … Read More
