France
Kathryn Reilly
Wes Anderson and Jarvis Cocker do 1960s French pop – this frothy confection couldn’t be any more “art school” if it were smoking a gauloise in a black polo-neck. Truly, what a match made on the Eurostar! For one so thoroughly Sheffield born-and-bred, Mr Cocker has oodles of French chic (plus a French ex-wife and Paris-based son). He nails yé-yé, of course, but you can imagine he was weaned on the genre.It all started with his cover of the 1965 Christophe hit “Aline” made for Wes Anderson’s latest film, The French Dispatch (Jarvis told We Present recently that the director actually guided Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Soprano Sabine Devieilhe (pronounced Devielle) and pianist Alexandre Tharaud are both well on their way to becoming "Monuments Nationaux" in France. When their most recent album Chanson d'Amour (Erato/Warner) was launched in September 2020 – the title is a nod to Fauré rather than Manhattan Transfer – the radio station France-Musique more or less cleared its schedule for an entire day, with no fewer than half a dozen separate programmes to mark the release.The appeal of Devieilhe’s singing is instantly understandable. She graduated with flying colours from the Paris Conservatoire in Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“Do you have a problem with old dykes?” demands Nina (the superbly ferocious Barbara Sukowa) of a bland, nervous young estate agent, halfway through this wonderfully original first feature from director Filippo Meneghetti. No, he stammers. “You see, no one gives a damn, except you, Mado,” she hisses at her secret lover Madeleine (Martine Chevallier).Two of Us – the French title, Deux, is a more elegant fit – is a story of closed doors, peepholes and passion. Sukowa, known for her youthful roles in Fassbinder’s films, and Chevallier, both in their early seventies, shine as a closeted lesbian Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The extraordinary story of motor industry executive Carlos Ghosn is a heady combination of power, money, corruption and international politics, with a Mission: Impossible-style ending that carries it over the finishing tape in dramatic style. It might be considered a cautionary tale, except that Ghosn’s experiences and personality were so unique that a repeat performance could never happen.Nick Green’s Storyville film tells Ghosn’s story with the pace and punch of a thriller, illustrated with interviews with various key participants and observers, its disturbing atmosphere enhanced by eerie Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Michelle Pfeiffer all but purrs her way through French Exit, as befits a splendid actress who cut a memorable Catwoman onscreen nearly thirty years ago. Playing a New York grande dame who deals with bankruptcy by decamping with her son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges) to Paris, Pfeiffer informs the character of the mortality-obsessed Frances Price with an implicit "meow", as if forever finding fault with a world in which, short of funds, she is now surplus to requirements.Pfeiffer is the star attraction of Azazel Jacobs's film, which she powers her way through as if playing a longlost Tennessee Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Lupin isn’t really about the fictional character it’s named after (the gentleman thief Arsène Lupin, created in 1905 by French writer Maurice Leblanc), but about Assane Diop, who’s an obsessive fan of the Lupin novels. He’s also a gentleman thief and master of disguise himself, as he displays in multiple disappearing acts, sleights of hand and bewildering stunts in this French-made series.This five-episode Part 2 is really a season-ette, since it’s the second half of the first part which appeared in January. That left viewers dangling nervously, as it ended with the abduction of Assane’s son Read more ...
mark.kidel
Jean-Luc Godard’s film-making career, a restless quest for a cinema that questions the medium as well as its place in the social and political context, is both astonishingly prolific and unique. Rarely drawing directly on autobiographical themes, sometimes refusing to be credited as the sole director, he nevertheless remains the most personally driven of all the stars of the French New Wave. His 1966 Masculin Féminin is a kind of hologram of the thematic obsessions and stylistic tropes that characterise many of his best-known films.Although very loosely inspired by two Maupassant short Read more ...
Sarah Kent
David Hockney has a new toy, an app designed specially for him that allows him to work on an iPad with fine brushes. He spent the first five months of lockdown In Normandy making daily records of the coming of spring; the results are displayed in a large show at the Royal Academy (★★). Seamless animation turns his still images into a continuum. As you watch the gradual transition from bare branches to full flowering, it’s as if you were looking over the artist’s shoulder while he works, which is fascinating.Then come the inkjet prints of the iPad pictures; they have the uncanny luminosity of Read more ...
Charlie Stone
"Trompe-l’œil," explains the director of the Institut de Peinture in Brussels, “is the meeting of a painting and a gaze, conceived for a particular point of view, and defined by the effect it is supposed to produce”. In layman’s terms, it is the art of decorative painting, the technique of creating an optical illusion whereby a surface appears three-dimensional. It’s also the subject of this book. Painting Time, Maylis de Kerangal’s latest novel, translated by Jessica Moore, is an ode to that somewhat overlooked side of the artist’s craft, a determined evocation of the skill, dedication and Read more ...
graham.rickson
Raw opens with a bang, a distant figure on a remote country road stepping out in front of a car, causing it to crash into a tree. What’s really happened isn’t made clear until we’re well into French director Julia Ducournau’s 2016 feature. Part coming-of-age drama, part grisly horror, the film centres on young Justine (Garance Marillier), a fresher at the remote veterinary college once attended by her parents and where her sister Alexia is already a student.The campus is a bleak, brutalist outpost, and Justine’s first days there are dominated by a series of barbaric initiation ceremonies, the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Chances are many will not have heard of Gojira. At best, as a music lover, theirs may be a name seen among the line-up of metal festivals. As ever with metal, perceived as niche but with a vast audience, this is misleading. Gojira are globally successful, quarter of century into their career, with proper hit albums under their belt. They are also that rare thing, a French heavy metal band.Fortitude is their seventh studio album and follows on from their most successful, 2016’s Magma. That album was an excoriating affair, built around the response of brothers Joe and Mario Duplantier, frontman Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
The Romanian director Radu Jude invariably serves spicy satire that challenges his compatriots to face historical crimes and present failings. The latest is an erudite and daft, raunchy and knockabout, endlessly provocative film that, for sake of brevity, we’ll call Loony Porn.The film has not only been made during the pandemic but fulsomely features the life of a city outdoors – namely Bucharest – as its citizens routinely engaged in social distancing, face covering and the rest. Accompanied by a plot that touches on parenting, the worse aspects of social media and cancel culture, the result Read more ...