France
Adam Sweeting
"Maybe everything that dies someday comes back," Bruce Springsteen posited in "Atlantic City". The residents of the French Alpine village at the centre of The Returned may conclude that he had a point. The Returned (Les Revenants in the original French) might sound superficially as if it's the latest in the ongoing vogue for zombies which (along with a parallel strain of photogenic vampires) is exerting a stranglehold on the entertainment industry. Brad Pitt goes to war with a global zombie plague in the new movie World War Z, The Walking Dead needs no introduction, and we've had Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Read theartsdesk's review of episode 1 of The ReturnedThe Returned, which hits our screens on Sunday night, is the first foreign language drama to appear on Channel 4 in 20 years. Under its original title Les Revenants, it was a ratings-topping hit in France when it was broadcast on Canal+ last year. It looks like having every chance of cashing in on the current British vogue for stylish European dramas with subtitles, predominantly (though by no means exclusively) Scandinavian, and Sunday's debut episode will even feature an all-French ad break.To make doubly sure of grabbing an audience, Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Writer-director Régis Roinsard's feature debut is a perky French rom-com which brings together the talented, easy-on-the-eye trio of Déborah François, Romain Duris and Bérénice Bejo. Set in the late 50s it contains oodles of delicious period detail along with shades of the much-loved Amelie and the adorable 60s TV series Bewitched. It should be likeable; it should be full of fun. So why doesn't it work? Two words seal its fate: speed typing.The year is 1958 in the small town of Saint-Fraimbault and - against the wishes of her conservative shopkeeper father - Rose Pamphyle (François) is Read more ...
David Nice
Down Whitehall, the English Defence League had been making ripples, and at 7.40pm some of its packs were still roaring round Trafalgar Square. At that moment, Berlioz’s March to the Scaffold from the Symphonie fantastique drowned them out in one big va t’en which you could have translated into a hundred languages.For here was the music of a Frenchman conducted by a Russian, played by an orchestra of many nationalities to a packed-out crowd of many more and every creed, made up of adults, children, babies and dogs. As in last week’s horrific murder, for every minus, however gross, more than a Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Cinema sometimes seems to have left the Age of Aquarius behind. The filmmakers who came of age in the Sixties have long since said what they needed to, and nowadays the decade’s evanescent aura feels confined to 50th anniversaries of the likes of Billy Liar and The Leopard. Olivier Assayas’s Something in the Air plunges us right back in as it which harks longingly back to the heady days of the soixante-huitards when apparently, for those who were there, it seemed possible the world could be fashioned anew.Assayas wasn’t quite there hurling bricks at the police at the Battle of the Sorbonne, Read more ...
James Williams
The ICA was the perfect location for the UK debut of hotly tipped new duo Tomorrow’s World, consisting of Air’s Jean-Benoit Dunckel and English synth-rockers New Young Pony Club’s ivory tickler Lou Hayter. The venue added a prestigious edge to what promised to be an auspicious occasion. A scant crowd suggested this was more of a test run than a full-blown debut, but they needn’t have worried about the reaction. Their music spoke for itself.Support came from another alumnus of London’s New Young Pony Club, guitarist Igor Volk. His set was impressive, the newly-released single "Voice" really Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A female hiker is naked. A village is close. Lying on the slope down to a river, she invites the taciturn man she’s followed to have sex. They do. She begins shrieking and foaming at the mouth. He fastens his face to hers. She could then be dead yet begins crawling into the water, looks heavenwards and spreads her arms.The images of baptism and rebirth are clear. But the motivation of the man, David Dewale’s Le gars (the man or guy), is less clear cut. Bruno Dumont’s Hors Satan (Outside Satan) is hard to read in terms of specifics, but overall it dwells on the arrival of a mystical outsider Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Manu Chao isn’t exactly a household name in the UK. In much of Latin America and Europe, however, he’s an iconic figure who is probably the closest thing to Bob Marley there is, a symbol of hope for the dispossessed. He’s a somewhat elusive figure, a wandering artist who for years never had his own place, a mobile phone or a watch, forever on the move, addicted to travel. In the title song of his 1998 multi-million selling classic Clandestino he sings of how “to run is my destiny... lost in the grand Babylon.” The song is not just autobiographical, but is also about the hypocrisy of Western Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Marie Curie must rank right up there among the world’s achievers of greatness. She certainly wasn’t one of those who had it “thrust upon ’em”. In fact, fate stacked the odds against her achieving the eminence she did in just about every way possible.She was born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw at a time when Poland was dominated by its Russian occupiers, and scientific training for Poles could only be had on the hoof in the underground, so-called “flying” universities. Through great good fortune she followed her sister to the Sorbonne, one of the very few universities accepting women at the time, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Gainsbourg-Birkin dynasty is akin to a gift that keeps on giving. Just when it appears to be dormant, another member of the extended family reveals a new role. Lou Doillon, daughter of Jane Birkin and film director Jacques Doillon, is best known as a model and actress. Last September her debut album, Places, was released in France and its belated arrival over here is sure to make a few waves. Hopefully not because of who she is, but due to it being first-rate.With Places, Doillon is some way ahead of half-sister Charlotte Gainsbourg, whose albums are written by others. All the songs are Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The 1988 uprising in the French colony of New Caledonia, in the Western Pacific, is apparently unknown to most French people, let alone we rosbifs, but director Mathieu Kassovitz has used the episode as a scalpel with which to probe issues of colonialism, race and political cynicism. It's something of a return to issues Kassovitz explored in La Haine (1995), following his excursions into the supernatural and sci-fi with Gothika and Babylon AD.The setup is pretty simple. A group of Kanak separatists launches a surprise attack on a gendarmerie on the island of Ouvéa, killing four French Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
“There are three rivers in Lyons: the Rhône, the Saône and the Beaujolais.” Thus goes the popular saying – as apt today for France’s gastronomic and wine-quaffing capital as it was back in the 15th century, when the city first became a hub of European political and social life. The cobbled streets, Roman amphitheatres and ubiquitous vistas of Lyons's hillside Old Town draw their share of tourists, while the celebrated bouchons and Michelin-starred restaurants bring in the rest. But what of the city's cultural life?The opera house is the natural hub, rivalling the magnificent Hôtel de Ville Read more ...