France
DVD: Reinventing MarvinMonday, 29 October 2018
You have to turn to the brief interview with director Anne Fontaine that is the sole extra on this DVD release to discover the real source of her film Reinventing Marvin. Though Fontaine and Pierre Trividic’s screenplay is credited as original, it... Read more... |
The Height of the Storm, Wyndham's Theatre review - Eileen Atkins raises the elliptical to artThursday, 11 October 2018
If you're going to write a play that traffics in bafflement, it's not a bad idea to have on hand one of the most beady-eyed actresses around. That would be Dame Eileen Atkins, whose keen-eyed intelligence cuts a swathe through the deliberate... Read more... |
Katya Apekisheva, Charles Owen, Kings Place review - one plus one equals a hundredThursday, 04 October 2018
We could probably spend all day pondering what makes a great musical partnership. Is it long experience, special sensitivity, a shared sense of humour? We’d get nowhere, though because there is, genuinely, something about it that can't be explained... Read more... |
Faces Places review - Agnès Varda's enchanted journeyThursday, 20 September 2018
On the eve of her tenth decade, the marvellous Agnès Varda embarked on the enchanted journey that we see in Faces Places. For admirers of the great French director – of whom there are a great many: indeed, it is hard not to be won over by her... Read more... |
Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto: 'We figured Molière would have toyed with it too'Wednesday, 19 September 2018
Back in June 2017, in the days when English summertime was a lazy idyll rather than an apocalyptic inferno, RSC artistic director Greg Doran met us at his office in Stratford-upon-Avon and asked whether we wanted to write a new version of ... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: RedoubtableSunday, 09 September 2018
For viewers challenged by the work of French auteur classic Jean-Luc Godard, Michel Hazanavicius’ Redoubtable catches the moment when Godard himself began to be challenged by Godard. The irony, a considerable one, is that Godard was rejecting... Read more... |
Prom 71, DiDonato, Tamestit, ORR, Gardiner review - concert Berlioz as bracing theatreThursday, 06 September 2018
How do you make your mark in a crucial last week after the Olympian spectaculars of Kirill Petrenko's Proms with the Berlin Philharmonic? Well, for a start, you stay true to recent principles by getting as many of your period-instrument Orchestre... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: La maladie de la mort / The End of EddyWednesday, 22 August 2018
La maladie de la mort ★★★ Toxic masculinity in all its appalling variety is a hot topic across Edinburgh’s festivals this year – just check out Daughter at CanadaHub and even Ulster American at the Traverse for two particularly... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Itinéraire Baroque 2018 - canaries in front of a Périgord altarMonday, 20 August 2018
Brits are the folk you expect to encounter the most in the rural-England-on-steroids of the beautiful Dordogne. In my experience they outnumber the French, at least in high summer, not just as visitors and retired homeowners but also as artisans... Read more... |
Prom 45, Capuçon, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Nott - scintillating new era for Swiss magiciansFriday, 17 August 2018
Who is the greatest British conductor in charge of a major orchestra? It's subjective, but my answer is not what you might expect. Jonathan Nott has done all his major work so far on the continent. He left the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra in excellent... Read more... |
Blu-ray: La Belle et la bêteFriday, 10 August 2018
Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la bête had been planned as a slice of wartime escapism, a distraction from the privations of war. The film was also a chance for Cocteau to give his male lead Jean Marais a less overtly sexy role than his fans were used... Read more... |
Annie Ernaux: The Years, review - time’s flowSunday, 05 August 2018
“When you were our age, how did you imagine your life? What did you hope for?” It is a video of a classroom south-east of the Périphérique separating Paris from the working-class suburbs. The students are mostly girls between fifteen and sixteen and... Read more... |
