France
Unforgotten – Series 2 Finale, ITV / After Brexit: The Battle for Europe, BBC TwoFriday, 10 February 2017
From Jimmy Savile to the Rotherham scandal, child sexual abuse has become a recurring nightmare of our society, and thus is inevitably grist to the TV dramatist’s mill. It has been a crucial component in The Missing, National Treasure and... Read more... |
CD: Petite Meller - Lil EmpireSunday, 15 January 2017
God knows we need originality in pop, and French singer Petite Meller delivers it. At least, she does visually, which, in 2017, is 50 percent of the game. Like Yolandi Visser of Die Antwoord, she offers a direct subversion of femininity. However,... Read more... |
Sunday Book: Michel Houellebecq - Unreconciled: Poems 1991-2013Sunday, 08 January 2017
The American poet-critic Randall Jarrell once entitled a collection of essays A Sad Heart at the Supermarket. He might have enjoyed Michel Houellebecq’s poem “Hypermarket - November”. Its forlorn narrator has “stumbled into freezer”, then “collapsed... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: IndochineFriday, 30 December 2016
The end of empire has rarely looked more cinematically beguiling than in Régis Wargnier’s Indochine, the visually lavish 1992 drama written for Catherine Deneuve, who gets the film’s epigraphic line about “believing that the world is made of things... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Gilbert BécaudSunday, 11 December 2016
Anthologie 1953–2002 is a monster. A 20-disc set spanning almost 50 years, it tracks one of France’s most beloved singers and songwriters. Gilbert Bécaud died in December 2001, but songs from his posthumously released Je Partirai album are included... Read more... |
AlliedThursday, 24 November 2016
While it makes for a moderately amusing evening out, this World War Two espionage-romance caper doesn't stand up to a lot of scrutiny (I'm trying to work out where they managed to find the "Best Film of the Year!" quote used in the TV ad). Stars... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: NapoléonSunday, 20 November 2016
Like Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Abel Gance's Napoléon is the monument of a genius badly in need of self-editing. In both instances, everything testifies to the singular vision of the artist - in Gance's case, his innovations in the field of... Read more... |
FrancofoniaFriday, 11 November 2016
The Russian director Alexander Sokurov has never been afraid of tackling weighty, often philosophical issues head on, and his latest film Francofonia is as pioneering – and, some might say, unnecessarily uncompromising – as ever. It’s nothing less... Read more... |
Paul Nash, Tate BritainMonday, 31 October 2016
In Monster Field, 1938, fallen trees appear like the fossilised remains of giant creatures from prehistory. With great horse-like heads, and branches like a tangle of tentacles and legs, Paul Nash’s series of paintings and photographs serve as... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Lion in WinterTuesday, 11 October 2016
Anthony Harvey’s The Lion in Winter was released in 1968, the screenplay adapted by James Goldman from his long-running play. Loosely based on historical fact, the Lear-like plot charts an ageing King Henry II’s futile attempts to choose a successor... Read more... |
Jean-Michel Jarre, Brighton CentreFriday, 07 October 2016
If this review had a subtitle, it would be “Rave in the Mausoleum”. Jean-Michel Jarre threw everything he had at the crowd – state of the art lightshow, earthquake-level bass, eardrum-shattering decibels, remixed greatest hits, thumping kick-drums,... Read more... |
DVD: The Measure of a ManTuesday, 13 September 2016
Stéphane Brizé’s film is about the grubby tyranny and humiliation of working life. Middle-aged Thierry (Vincent Lindon, Best Actor at Cannes and the Césars) has a hangdog face which fails to mask his anger after being unjustly laid off. He seems... Read more... |
