Paris
GirlhoodThursday, 07 May 2015
Confounding expectations from the first frames, Girlhood is the endearingly scrappy and staggeringly beautiful third film from French writer-director Céline Sciamma (Tomboy) and no relation to Boyhood. Intimate and exuberant, it's a coming-of-age... Read more... |
A Nation Divided? The Charlie Hebdo Aftermath, BBC ThreeTuesday, 31 March 2015
All the politicians lined up to chorus "Je suis Charlie" after the nauseating massacre of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in Paris in January, but three months later, how is that emotional declaration of solidarity against murderous extremism holding... Read more... |
Dior and IWednesday, 25 March 2015
If anyone thinks high fashion is an airy-fairy world populated by flibbertigibbets preoccupied with frills and furbelows, Frédéric Tcheng’s feature-length documentary Dior and I, a behind-the-scenes account of the race to prepare the 2012 Christian... Read more... |
Inventing Impressionism, National GalleryWednesday, 04 March 2015
Here is an exhibition that tells us how something we now take totally for granted actually came about: how our love affair with the Impressionists was masterminded by an art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922). He was a prime mover in inventing the... Read more... |
Salt and Silver, Tate BritainWednesday, 25 February 2015
Captured in monochromes ranging from the most delicate honeyed golds to robust gradations of aubergine and deep brown, the earliest photographs still provoke a shiver of surprise and excitement. Even now, their very existence seems miraculous, and... Read more... |
Six Characters in Search of an Author, Théâtre de la Ville-Paris, BarbicanThursday, 05 February 2015
"The fantastical should come so close to the real that you must almost believe it," declared Dostoyevsky on Pushkin’s ghostly short story The Queen of Spades. Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota and his superb French ensemble have brought off the feat twice now... Read more... |
DVD: LucyFriday, 26 December 2014
This has been Scarlett Johansson’s defining year. Previously seeming a slightly dazed, limited beauty, she bravely abandoned her comfort zone in Jonathan Glazer’s gruelling and strange Scottish s.f. vision Under the Skin, then had her biggest hit... Read more... |
DVD: The Kidnapping of Michel HouellebecqSaturday, 20 December 2014
There’s a wonderful drollery to Guillaume Nicloux’s wry and eccentric comedy The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq (L‘Enlèvement de Michel Houellebecq) which is quintessentially Gallic. Three years ago the enfant terrible of French literature... Read more... |
School of BabelTuesday, 02 December 2014
“God isn’t in this class, we’ll leave God outside.” Although teacher Brigitte Cervoni declares that matters of religion are not appropriate for her class of non-French children learning the language of their new country, a lengthy section of School... Read more... |
Eastern BoysMonday, 01 December 2014
Eastern Boys is a disturbing film. Robin Campillo’s second feature as director catches the often aggressive world of immigrant grifters in Paris – they’re a gang of young men largely from the former Soviet Union – and their interaction with the... Read more... |
DVD: Mood IndigoTuesday, 25 November 2014
This is a simple story told in the most creatively chaotic way. A kaleidoscope of stunning visuals, intricate mechanics and curious characters unfolds, revealing the tale of Chloe (Audrey Tautou) and Colin (Romain Duris) who fall in love.Their... Read more... |
My Old LadySaturday, 22 November 2014
An Off Broadway play that largely passed without notice in 2002 is now a movie poised to suffer the same fate, notwithstanding the fact that this starry three-hander marks the film directing debut of the prolific American dramatist Israel Horovitz,... Read more... |
