Nick Hammond
Le Grand Bain
A Plunge into Implausibility
Isn’t it just typical? You wait so long for a film about a middle-aged male synchronized swimming team, then two come along at once. In Britain, Swimming with Men, starring comedian Rob Bryden, has received middling reviews (“likably daft,” said … Read More
Debussy at the Beach
No Fun in the Sun for Composer
Why, you might ask, is an exhibition titled “Debussy at the Beach” being held at the National Museum of Archaeology in the precincts of the château at Saint-Germain-en-Laye? Perhaps in order to present a close examination of the beach pebbles … Read More
Sauvage
Wild Child
We may all have had our fill of movies about a tart with a heart, but Sauvage is something different. The central character, Léo (Félix Maritaud), is a 22-year-old gay male prostitute who, despite being obliged to perform degrading acts … Read More
Tristan und Isolde
The Joys of Tragedy
Some might think that foregoing one of the final days of late-summer sunshine to spend over five hours cooped up in a theater watching Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde demonstrates either an admirable sense of duty or complete madness. When … Read More
France Wins the World Cup
Allez les Bleus!
A few weeks ago, when I realized that I would be in Paris on the day of the World Cup soccer final, as an England fan I began to harbor totally unrealistic dreams of being there for a France-England final. … Read More
L’Heure Espagnole & Gianni Schicchi
Belly Laughs at the Opera
In the opera world, it has now become the rule rather than the exception to pair Maurice Ravel’s 1911 one-act opera L’Heure Espagnole with Giacomo Puccini’s 1918 single-act Gianni Schicchi. It is easy to see why: although each piece … Read More
Left Bank: Art, Passion, and the Rebirth of Paris 1940-50
Intellectual Paris during the Occupation and Beyond
Agnès Poirier’s scintillating new book, Left Bank: Art, Passion, and the Rebirth of Paris 1940-50, focuses on an extraordinary decade in Paris’s cultural and intellectual history. Poirier, who will be familiar to readers who follow her regular articles for the … Read More
Living in Paris
Au Revoir, Monsieur José
In the 20 years that I have owned a little studio apartment in Paris’s ninth arrondissement, the district has changed considerably. Almost every restaurant has been replaced at successive intervals by other restaurants; fancy gift shops have been transformed into Italian … Read More
La Bohème
Tragic Love in a Frosty Setting
Imagine the scene. German director Claus Guth has been asked to create a new production of Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème for the Bastille Opera House in Paris. “I need to shake up this old chestnut.” he says to himself. “Let … Read More
Visages Villages
Seeing the Power of the Imagination
What a surprising pleasure to see the new documentary Visages, Villages, by 89-year-old Agnès Varda, made with 34-year-old artist JR and first shown out of competition at this year’s Cannes Film festival. Throughout the course of the film, both Varda … Read More