sun 24/08/2025

France

Kaija Saariaho's Émilie, Opéra de Lyon

Émilie du Châtelet: 'Châtelet (Karita Mattila) staggers around her orrery study barefoot like a 19th-century hysteric: temperamental, mystical and totally doolally.'

The new millennium shimmered into earshot with a musical masterpiece from a female Finn. Kaija Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin (2000) appeared to open up an enticing new operatic sound world, less dogmatic, more instinctive, colourful and intense, very...

Read more...

Océans

Who doesn't like watching funny-looking fish? There are some doozies in Océans, the new film from Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzard, the duo that brought us Winged Migration. There's one creature with a mug like the Elephant Man and another which...

Read more...

Movie Gallery: Océans

Nature as we rarely see it: a fishy customer from Océans

To accompany Anne Billson's review of Océans, the new documentary from the men behind Winged Migration, we present a line-up of fishy customers from the film, including the two directors, the Jacques Cluzaud and Perrin. Real or fake, verité or...

Read more...

Compagnie Ieto, LIMF, Purcell Room

Compagnie Ieto are two modest Frenchmen with immodest circus skills - modesty in all the right proportions. Jonathan Guichard and Fnico Feldmann teamed up in 2006 and were finalists in the 2008 Jeunes Talents Cirque with this show Ieto, last night's...

Read more...

A Prophet

A Prophet is a different sort of prison movie. Jacques Audiard's follow-up to The Beat That My Heart Skipped is another dip into the criminal underworld, and mostly takes place in a French jail. Nearly every other film or TV series I can think of...

Read more...

The Misanthrope, Comedy Theatre

She’s the most famous young pout in Hollywood. And her first West End appearance has already sparked a media frenzy, making this contemporary version of Molière’s The Misanthrope the hottest ticket in town, with massive advance bookings already...

Read more...

Zizi Jeanmaire: Not Giselle but Carmen

SHE was the most chic Sixties doll that ever walked the streets, and all Britain enumerated her qualities when Peter Sarstedt's haunting pop-song hit the charts in 1969. "You talk like Marlene Dietrich, And you dance like Zizi Jeanmaire. Your...

Read more...
Subscribe to France