Ce qu’Il Restera de Nous
The Longest 40-Minute Film Ever The lipstick smear: how to tell a woman is losing it in a French film. Always on the lookout for films that do not quite fit the mold, I recently saw the 40-minute Ce qu’Il … Read More
Archive
Au Bout du Conte
A Modern Fairytale Lacking in Adventure Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnès Jaoui in “Au Bout du Conte.” Ever since being blown away by the warmth, humor and humanity of Le Goût des Autres (2000), I must admit to approaching each new … Read More
De Rouille et d’Os
Extreme Tragedy MeetsEveryday Tragedy Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts), takes Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard) for her liberating first swim since her accident. Photo: Roger Arpajou Why Not Productions Jacques Audiard’s reputation as one of France’s most original, hard-hitting movie directors is sure to … Read More
Laurence Anyways
Time for Precocious Talent to Grow Up and Knuckle Down Melvil Poupaud as Laurence. Photo © Shayne Laverdière When reviewing director Xavier Dolan’s last film, Les Amours Imaginaires, I wrote that his best was yet to come, just as long … Read More
Dans la Maison
Risky Game of Seduction in Ozon’s Best Film Yet Left to right: Fabrice Luchini, Emmanuelle Seigner and Ernst Umhauer Dans la Maison (In the House), prolific filmmaker François Ozon’s latest offering, may well be his most accomplished movie to date. Combining … Read More
Alceste à Bicyclette
Great Idea for a Film Veers off Course Fabrice Luchini, playing actor Serge Tanneur, wears his Alceste costume to a party. It is easy to imagine actor Fabrice Luchini and director Philippe Le Guay sitting down to hatch a brilliant idea … Read More
Tuer le Père (2)
On the right: real-life Amélie Nothomb. On the left: book-jacket Amélie Nothomb. Certain aspects of novelist Amélie Nothomb’s work are utterly predictable: for example, every fall a new novel (usually around 150 pages long) appears without fail, with a portrait … Read More
Neon
Paris Update Art Notes BURNT BAR BLUES A Nana Mouskouri album cover amid the debris. A much-loved institution in Paris’s ninth arrondissement, the corner bar Chez Sylvain, went up in flames last week. Although Sylvain himself got out safely, his … Read More
Huis Clos
A Pleasant Evening in Sartrean Hell The Théâtre du Nord-Ouest on the busy Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, just off Paris’s Grands Boulevards, has definitely seen better days. The peeling paint and dilapidated Favorite
Le Pont des Soupirs, Offenbach
BRIDGE OF SIGHS Scene from “Le Pont des Soupirs.” Photo © Gilles Plagnol for Les Tréteaux Lyriques. For an entertaining if intellectually undemanding experience, you could do far worse than go to the 150th anniversary staging of Jacques Offenbach’s … Read More