France
Summer HoursWednesday, 14 April 2010
After a trio of harsh modern pictures dealing with the pitfalls of globalisation - Demonlover, Clean, and Boarding Gate - the director Olivier Assayas felt the need to write a more personal, reflective screenplay around the time Paris’s Musée d’... Read more... |
Prima Donna, Sadler's WellsMonday, 12 April 2010
Why write gluey pastiche Massenet and Puccini when you could compose as your flamboyant self? Why collaborate on a cliché-ridden French text when your song lyrics declare themselves so piquantly in English? Rufus Wainwright must have his own reasons... Read more... |
Anthony Caro: Upright Sculptures, Annely JudaMonday, 12 April 2010
Anthony Caro makes works with the human figure in mind. The venerated sculptor, who, at 86, remains seemingly unstoppable, came to prominence in the early Sixties with his brightly coloured abstract steel sculptures. These, such as his seminal 1962... Read more... |
SaganSaturday, 03 April 2010
A sensational performance by Sylvie Testud is the singular reason to catch this rambling biopic of Françoise Sagan - bestselling novelist, high-rolling playgirl, multiple addict, flamboyant bisexual, monstre sacré - which plays in repertory... Read more... |
Platée, Opera du RhinFriday, 26 March 2010
French geography has a significant hand in the small but exuberantly formed opera and dance that comes out of that civilised country - scaled for the important theatres that lie far beyond Paris and which have a great deal to teach Britain about... Read more... |
Fat Man in a White Hat, BBC FourWednesday, 24 March 2010
Sophie Dahl made her debut as a TV chef last night in The Delicious Miss Dahl (try and imagine Leslie Phillips saying that), a BBC Two confection even more absurdly artificial than the various Nigella Lawson food-porn shows. At least you believe... Read more... |
LourdesTuesday, 23 March 2010
Is there a God, and if so is He malevolent, and what's on the menu for dessert? Like one of her characters, Jessica Hausner, the relatively unknown, but startlingly talented director of Lourdes, doesn't shy away from asking the really important... Read more... |
Kaija Saariaho's Émilie, Opéra de LyonTuesday, 09 March 2010
The new millennium shimmered into earshot with a musical masterpiece from a female Finn. Kaija Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin (2000) appeared to open up an enticing new operatic sound world, less dogmatic, more instinctive, colourful and intense, very... Read more... |
OcéansMonday, 01 February 2010
Who doesn't like watching funny-looking fish? There are some doozies in Océans, the new film from Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzard, the duo that brought us Winged Migration. There's one creature with a mug like the Elephant Man and another which... Read more... |
Movie Gallery: OcéansMonday, 01 February 2010
To accompany Anne Billson's review of Océans, the new documentary from the men behind Winged Migration, we present a line-up of fishy customers from the film, including the two directors, the Jacques Cluzaud and Perrin. Real or fake, verité or... Read more... |
Compagnie Ieto, LIMF, Purcell RoomThursday, 28 January 2010
Compagnie Ieto are two modest Frenchmen with immodest circus skills - modesty in all the right proportions. Jonathan Guichard and Fnico Feldmann teamed up in 2006 and were finalists in the 2008 Jeunes Talents Cirque with this show Ieto, last night's... Read more... |
A ProphetSunday, 17 January 2010
A Prophet is a different sort of prison movie. Jacques Audiard's follow-up to The Beat That My Heart Skipped is another dip into the criminal underworld, and mostly takes place in a French jail. Nearly every other film or TV series I can think of... Read more... |
