France
Ismene Brown
The puppets appearing in LIMF this year are by no means all child-friendly - after the mild kiddy-horror of Teatro Corsario and their hand-manipulated Bunraku creatures, the return of the much more disturbing imagination of Patrick Sims, founder and governing mad scientist of Buchinger’s Boot Marionettes, was my most-looked-for event. The unhinged strangeness of Armature of the Absolute and of Shellachrymellaecum still rattles discomfitingly around in the darker corners of my memory from time to time, scratchy, dusty flutterings of skeletal critters, tiny fairy babies sobbing in jars of Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
A programme of French music under the baton of the LPO’s talented young principal guest conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin should be a treat. Nézet-Séguin’s affinity for French textures and gestures has already been amply proved, as has the orchestra’s own aptitude for them, yet whatever was happening to the Fauré Requiem last night at the Royal Festival Hall was neither polished nor delightful. To attribute it simply to a bad day might be the kindest thing, but when you take into account the sold-out hall, the Saturday-night profile of the concert and all the people who had come to London’s Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In 1994 half a million Rwandan Tutsis were slaughtered over a period of six weeks. Among them were the four brothers and two sisters of Jean-Pierre Sagahutu. His mother was raped before she too was killed. His father, a doctor, was intercepted on the way to the hospital and, when he was unable to pay a fine at a roadblock, was pulled from his car, hit over the head with a blunt hoe and taken to a ditch where his body was dumped. Rwanda, to which three million refugees have returned as the economy has tripled, is known as the great success story of Africa. But as this riveting film suggested, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Breton capital Rennes is an attractive city. Move north from the train station, pass through a covered market with tripe and saucisse sellers, cross a canal and there's a series of Italianate squares and arcades. Further along is the quaint Place St Anne and a warren of medieval streets lined with half-timbered buildings. It’s an inspiring cityscape. But for three days every December, the city is crammed with revellers and dogs on string who couldn't give a fig about the medieval cathedral. They're here for the Trans Musicales de Rennes, the annual musical jamboree. Just short of 100 acts Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Most critics have their own indicator of shows they have enjoyed hugely; for my part, if I fail to take anything but the most basic notes it’s because I’m so engrossed in the story or I’m laughing too much. And so it proved last night, when I found only hastily scribbled words - great this, wonderful that - in my notebook, enough to tell me that Richard Eyre's production of Georges Feydeau's 1907 farce A Flea in Her Ear is a hoot.The play comes with a good pedigree - Feydeau is a master farceur, of course, and Eyre a director of distinction, even if farce is not his usual stomping ground. The Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Who was a greater composer of words: Schubert or Purcell? A toss-up, I think, after a revelatory concert at the Wigmore Hall by Les Talens Lyriques with the French soprano Sandrine Piau on Saturday. The sheer quality of the poetry Purcell set in his Harmonia Sacra, collections of “divine hymns and dialogues”, is both profound and emotionally direct: “Lord, what is man?”, “In the black, dismal dungeon of despair”, “Music, for a while”... But it was a faintly contrary experience, delivered by a French singer whose English articulation did not quite coagulate as meaningful language, despite the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
This is the final production in the Donmar Warehouse’s 12-week season at Trafalgar Studios (which showcases the work of its resident assistant directors) and is a revival of Jeremy Sams’s translation of Jean Cocteau’s play - first seen in Sean Mathias’s acclaimed production at the National Theatre in 1994, with a cast that included Jude Law, Alan Howard and Sheila Gish.Director Chris Rolls, following in the wake of Lower Ninth and Novecento in the autumn season, has his work cut out with a play that often teeters dangerously between farce and melodrama. It’s not Cocteau’s greatest work - Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It has been one of the most surprising hits this year in French cinemas - a mostly male film which poses deep and pertinent questions about religion or, more specifically, religions. Its ultimate theme is the price of Christian devotion. Of Gods and Men is set in, of all the uncinematic locations, a still, often silent Cistercian monastery in North Africa, from which it derives its muted aesthetic tone and extremely careful pace.The cast all give performances of great humanity and individualityAlthough it never specifically says as much until the end credits roll, the film is based on events Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
First, an admission. I have a blindspot for the chamber work of Fauré, Saint-Saëns and Ravel. I've tried my best, acquainted myself with the most stirring recordings of the finest pieces, got friends to hold my hand. But I've never been able to shake off the feeling that these French composers are mostly a bit drippy in this genre, a bit Watercolour Challenge, a bit I-eat-yoghurt-vote-Lib-Dem-and-don't-have-much-of-a-pulse. So last night was laser-eye-treatment time. If Steven Isserlis and his clever colleagues couldn't banish my blindness at their Wigmore Hall recital, no one could. Read more ...
anne.billson
These days Gérard Depardieu looks as though he wouldn't need much padding to play Obélix again. Though he continues to work with some of the biggest names in French cinema, it has been a while since he really surprised us, maybe because he's now such a familiar presence; in 2010 alone, he took on no less than five leading roles and a couple of walk-ons. Like Jean Gabin before him, he has come to symbolise an earthy sort of Frenchness, a hard-working man of the people (even if he does support Sarkozy) and, in the UK at least, a reliable signifier of the sort of quality cinema so beloved Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
We sophisticates aren't really meant to enjoy Gounod. His simple 19th-century brew - five parts sentimentality, one part religiosity - isn't supposed to wash with modern palettes that crave layers of meaning, irony and social context. The ENO's solution last month was to present a version of Gounod's Faust that had these elements filled in. It flopped. But if the ENO had taken Gounod too far, was the Royal Opera House taking Gounod's Roméo et Juliette not far enough last night by relying on a 16-year-old production, a Romeo that fluffed his Rodolfo here last year and a debuting Georgian Read more ...
mark.kidel
When Tony Harrison transposed his version of Molière’s The Misanthrope from the 17th century to the early 1970s, he managed with his characteristic and brilliant combination of savagery and wit to make the play feel totally contemporary. For Andrew Hilton’s new production at the Bristol Old Vic, Harrison has tweaked the play into the 21st century, with characters clutching iPhones and boasting of their connections with Sarkozy. Molière’s masterpiece is about human failings and the reason this classic makes us laugh today is because we recognise ourselves in the characters' parade of Read more ...