France
igor.toronyilalic
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 much like the work's model, Debussy's Pélleas et Mélisande, had done a hundred years before. Ten years on, the critical establishment descended on Lyon for Saariaho's third opera, Émilie - which comes to the Barbican in 2012 - based on the last days of the life of 18th-century French intellectual, Émilie du Châtelet, to see if Saariaho could repeat Read more ...
anne.billson
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 disguises itself as a rock, all the better to leap out on its unsuspecting prey. There are jellyfish like mushrooms, anenomes which look like sinister black spiders and an invertebrate which looks like a floating cassock, dropped into the water by some absent-minded Pope.Like Winged Migration, this Franco-Spanish-Swiss coproduction gives us nature Read more ...
sheila.johnston
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 Photoshop? Click on the images below to enlarge them and draw your own conclusions.[bg|/THEATRE/Sheila_Johnston/Oceans] 1. Aurelia jellyfish 2. Green turtle 3. Ball of mackerel 4. The co-directors of Océans, Jacques Cluzaud (left) and Jacques Perrin 5. Bottle-nosed dolphin 6. Adelie penguin 7. Walruses 8. California sea lion 9. Weddell seals Read more ...
Ismene Brown
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 hugely entertaining offering at the Purcell Room by the London International Mime Festival. Mime theatre can be spoilt sometimes by lofty pretensions, but here all that was lofty was the eyewatering height at which Feldmann and Guichard were prepared to stand on perilous structures which they gleefully destabilised under themselves.Guichard is an Read more ...
anne.billson
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 which is set behind bars (Prison Break, The Shawshank Redemption, Papillon and so on) is concerned with escape. Even the two most celebrated French prison movies, A Man Escaped and Le trou, are about finding a way out. But A Prophet is that rare bird - a prison film in which escape is never an issue. It's all about the inside.Tahar Rahim plays an 19- Read more ...
aleks.sierz
She’s the most famous young pout in Hollywood. And her first West End appearance has already sparked a media frenzy, making this contemporary version of Molière’s The Misanthrope the hottest ticket in town, with massive advance bookings already guaranteeing anyone associated with the show a credit-crunch-proof Christmas. Of course, I’m talking about Keira Knightley – I mean, who isn’t? But what about the play, which opened last night with a barrage of paparazzi flashbulbs? And how does La Knightley shape up?Written by Martin Crimp, this take on Molière’s 1666 tale about the sourpuss Read more ...
Ismene Brown
SHE was the most chic Sixties doll that ever walked the streets, and all Britain enumerated her qualities when Peter Sarstedt's haunting pop-song hit the charts in 1969. "You talk like Marlene Dietrich, And you dance like Zizi Jeanmaire. Your clothes are all made by Balmain, And there's diamonds and pearls in your hair. But where do you go to, my lovely?..."In such a song, Margot Fonteyn would not have been a groovy reference. Zizi Jeanmaire was another matter. Not for her the pale suffering virgin; she was a ballerina the liberated chick could go for. Wearing a corset as black and short as Read more ...