Entre les Murs
Reality School
The movie Entre les Murs has caused quite a stir in France, not least because it is the first French film to have won the coveted Palme d’Or at Cannes in 21 years. This is all the more surprising an … Read More
Edited
Parlez-moi de la Pluie
Breaking Down Barriers
After the glorious Le Goût des Autres and the disappointing Comme une Image, I waited with nervous anticipation for the opening of Parlez-moi de la Pluie (Let It Rain is the less poetic official English title), Agnès Jaoui’s third film … Read More
Le Silence de Lorna
Hard Choices
With Le Silence de Lorna (Lorna’s Silence), brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have made another of their morally complex films about marginalized people coping with the situations they find themselves in. These are no hapless victims of a cruel society, … Read More
Soit Je meurs, soit Je Vais Mieux
Double Trouble
Is it a ploy to draw in the large teenage market during the summer holidays? All the new French films appearing in Paris this week seem to deal with the problems of adolescence: Nos 18 Ans is about high-school pupils … Read More
Podcast. With Jake Lamar
Interview with Jake Lamar
The American writer Jake Lamar, author of a memoir and five novels, will be reading from his latest thriller, Ghosts of Saint-Michel (St. Martin’s Minotaur), at the Village Voice Bookshop (6 rue Princesse, 75006 Paris) on Tuesday, September 12 at … Read More
Interview with John Biguenet
On the Verge O. Henry Award-winning writer John Biguenet, who lives in New Orleans, is in Paris this month for the launch of his novel Oyster, published in French as Le Secret du Bayou, and to teach a creative writing … Read More
Yvette, Bon Dieu!
How to Keep 'Em Down on the Ferme
Just a couple of hours from Paris by car, on a perfectly flat expanse of land in the Touraine, a complex of farm buildings like many others throughout France sits by the side of a quiet country lane. Someone in … Read More
Sagan
Making Up the Past
Following on the enormous success of La Môme (La Vie en Rose in English), which detailed the rise and fall of French singer Edith Piaf, we now have Sagan, directed by Diane Kurys, which details the rise and fall of … Read More
A Dangerous Liaison
Existential Affairs
When Jean-Paul Sartre was buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery (on the south side of Paris) on April 19, 1980, a crowd of 50,000 people surged forward as his distraught partner Simone de Beauvoir threw a white rose onto his coffin. … Read More
Un Conte de Noël
A Tale for All Seasons
Arnaud Desplechin’s first international success came with his third feature, the nearly three-hour Comment Je me Disputé… Ma Vie Sexuelle (even the title was long). You expected a terrible bore – a group of middle-class philosophy students talk, smoke, talk, … Read More