France
Adam Sweeting
The book by Tilar Mazzeo on which Thomas Napper's film is based is subtitled “The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled it”, though one suspects that the life of Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin was a little less Mills & Boon-ish than the version seen here.Nonetheless, the film is an enjoyable romp through the picturesque vineyards around Reims during the turbulent days of the Napoleonic wars, as Barbe marries François Clicquot and finds herself faced with a historic choice.Barbe is played by Haley Bennett (also one of the producers) as a woman who gradually reveals hidden depths and Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The title sounds as if we ought to be in for an evening of Virginia Woolf, and, indeed, one of the astonishing women on view (Deborah Findlay) was in fact a co-star of the recent West End version of Orlando. In fact, this late-summer offering is a scorching reminder of the power of European theatre at a venue, the Almeida, that has of late focused its attentions (often very well) on the American repertoire, from Tennessee Williams to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, amongst others.I also can't remember a show that has foregrounded women so formidably. The French writer Annie Ernaux's 2008 "hybrid Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
“One charming night gives more delight than a hundred lucky days”. So claims one of the gorgeous (and, in this case, risqué) numbers that stud Purcell’s “semi-opera” The Fairy Queen like sequins on a flamboyant party gown.Directed by tenor-turned-conductor Paul Agnew (pictured below), the Baroque ensemble Les Arts Florissants – together with singers from its sister company Le Jardin des Voix and dancers from Compagnie Käfig – certainly threw one hell of a Proms party. The illustrious French group’s all-dancing, all-singing, hip-hop-flavoured remake of Purcell’s loose riff on A Midsummer Night Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Ne pleure pas, Jeannette” is a version of the 15th-century French song "La pernette se lève." It tells the story of Jeannette, whose parents want her to marry into the gentry or royalty. She, however, is in love with Pierre. He is in prison. She vows to be hanged at the same time he is. In France, “Ne pleure pas, Jeannette” is a nursery rhyme. Versions have been recorded by Les Compagnons De La Chanson and French children’s TV favourite Dorothée.“Aux marches du palais” is also French and has been sung by (again) Les Compagnons De La Chanson, Marie Laforêt, Nana Mouskouri, Yves Montand and Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The Baker's Wife closed on the way to Broadway in 1976, since which time Stephen Schwartz's stubbornly resistent if sweetly scored musical has been revived and reworked all over the map, not least by Gordon Greenberg. The American director has tackled the show three times previously on his native soil and is now marking his retour to the Gallic gathering it puts before us at the venue where he previously directed Barnum. I'd love to report that the show this time flies, much like the meadowlark in the ravishing first-act solo number from the title character that remains the takeaway song Read more ...
Sarah Kent
On one level, Heart of an Oak is the most spectacular nature film you are ever likely to see. The camera glides over a forest before honing in on a magnificent, 210 year old oak tree. It travels up the gnarled surface of the ancient trunk, which resembles elephant hide, into the canopy. Time to introduce the cast of what directors Laurent Charbonnier and Michel Sedoux describe as an “adventure movie”: weevils, a red squirrel, woodpecker, robin and pair of jays, field mice and some wild boar. All of them live in or around the tree and this is their story.It’s high summer, but a storm is Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Rose has taken a while to get a release in the UK; this Danish comedy-drama opened in Scandinavia back in the autumn of 2022 and won positive reviews in the US last Christmas. Releasing a movie just as the sun finally appears to make spending an evening in a cinema unappealing, seems like a risky choice. But if you harbour a soft spot for Sofie Gråbøl (main picture), the actress who sparked a worldwide run on Faroe Island sweaters when she starred in The Killing, Rose may well draw you back into the dark. Gråbøl here is playing a very different character; Inger Read more ...
graham.rickson
One of those rare films that leaves you speechless after the closing credits, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows (L'Armée des ombres) sounds on paper as if it shouldn’t work.Melville’s penultimate film (it was released in 1969), this World War 2 thriller unfolds at a daringly slow pace, the dialogue pared back to essentials. Melville based his screenplay on a semi-autobiographical novel by Joseph Kessel, a fictionalised account of the author’s experiences as a member of the French Resistance. The big set pieces are viscerally exciting, but the mood is subdued, cinematographer Pierre Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Bab L’Bluz are a French-Moroccan four-piece that play a tasty blend of fiery psychedelic rock backed up with hypnotic North African gnawa rhythms. Featuring electric awisha lute, guembri, percussion and castanet-like qraqeb rather than more mainstream instruments, they tackle subjects like gender inequality and call for unity and tolerance – while getting hips swinging and feet stomping in a frenzied groove.Swaken is Bab L’Bluz’s second album and features Yousra Mansour’s emotive vocals and riff-heavy awisha lute backed by a giddy trance-rock sound that owes as much to Led Zeppelin’s heavy Read more ...
David Nice
Anyone who’d booked to hear soprano Sally Matthews or to witness the rapid progress of conductor Daniele Rustioni – the initial draw for me – could not have been disappointed in their late-stage replacements. Elizabeth Watts is as much of a national treasure among singers as Matthews, and Jader Bignamini, music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, negotiated his first Barbican concert with absolute mastery.The short curtain-raiser, Camille Pépin’s Les eaux célestes, immediately gave us a BBC Symphony Orchestra on top form, but there was nothing very freshwater here: pretty textures, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Ludicrous plotting and a tangled skein of coincidences hold no terrors for the makers of this frequently baffling French drama. Nonetheless, its story of a bizarre cult, a rapacious medical corporation and a trail of dead bodies stretching back through 30 years of history does somehow keep you coming back for more, if only to wonder how much more berserk proceedings can become.The opening scene is set in 1994, where a group of police in combat gear jump out of inflatable dinghies and advance towards a house, from which a man resembling a mashup of Charles Manson and Jesus Christ emerges, Read more ...
David Nice
Antonio Pappano fervently believes that talking about music is a vital part of his communicative art, and nobody does it better. Given that the London Symphony Orchestra's enterprising Half Six Fix format is scheduled for an hour each time, and that Ravel’s complete Daphnis et Chloé lasts almost that long, there wasn’t going to be much room for pre-performance demonstration yesterday evenng, but what we got still hit the mark.Pappano asked his LSO players to float away with the opening of “Daybreak”, start of the more often heard Second Suite but occurring some 40 minutes into the full ballet Read more ...