France
Marina Vaizey
It is irresistible to watch Andrew Roberts, the ambitious historian of one of history's most ambitious figures, narrating a three-part account of his hero’s life and times. He is giving us a superb analysis of Napoleon Bonaparte’s gifts, flaws, insecurities and achievements. The first instalment opened with a glorious sunset over the South Atlantic, and several views of the dramatic scenery of the volcanic island of St Helena where the exiled Napoleon was held for six years, 4,000 miles from home, as the prisoner of the British, until his death in 1821 at the age of 51. We saw pivotal Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Debussy completed only one opera (though he started plenty), but it’s the most perfect work imaginable, not only in sheer musical refinement and narrative precision, but in psychological penetration and above all in that exact grasp of the irrational nature of the medium that distinguishes the greatest operas from the merely effective. Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande is a sometimes uneasy blend of the mundane and the mysterious, but Debussy – in his quite faithful operatic version – fuses these two elements so successfully, through his music, that the distinction ceases to matter. His Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The country is groaning under the weight of commemorations, exhibitions, publications and programmes all marking significant anniversaries of World War One, but the underlying message – lest we forget – remains as potent as ever, perhaps even more so in these tumultuous times.Narrating this documentary chiefly concerned with the art of the First World War, Oscar-winning actor Eddie Redmayne told us that the art described the indescribable, conveying what is beyond description. If that sounds unbearably fey it isn’t at all, for the surprise and interest of this programme was in fact two-fold: Read more ...
Nick Hasted
François Ozon’s sly fascination with radical family units takes another, surprisingly gentle twist here. Based on a Ruth Rendell story but equally inspired by French protests against gay marriage, this is an affecting romcom starring a secret male transvestite and a woman, brought together by their love for the same dead person.A nine-minute prologue sketches in Claire’s deep friendship with Laura, from childhood till the latter’s death from cancer. The only person to mourn Laura as much is her widower David (Romain Duris). Surprising him in his home one day, Claire is shocked to her core to Read more ...
David Nice
Few conductors would think of putting Bernstein’s comic-sexy Fancy Free ballet and the orgasmatron of Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy together in a concert's second half. In fact I’ll wager, without research, that it’s never been done before. Yet as Music Director of the Royal Opera, Antonio Pappano has proved himself style-sensitive in everything from Mozart to Turnage – even Wagner, though that took time – and so he proved in bringing his orchestra onstage for their first, long-overdue mixed-programme concert together here.It will now be an annual event, Pappano told us before the music Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The phrase “improbable life” crops up more than once in Greg Olliver’s highly engaging documentary Turned Towards the Sun about the poet Micky Burn (its title is that of the writer’s autobiography). It’s a contradiction in terms, perhaps, but as a way of expressing the sheer richness of a life-story, one that overlapped with some of the notable events of the 20th century, encounters with Fascism and Communism, participation in one of the most daring World War II commando raids, imprisonment in Colditz, a complicated sexuality, and 50 years as a writer, it works rather well.It reminded me Read more ...
Jasper Rees
A French romantic comedy about immigration? Seeing Samba in election week may not be on Nigel Farage’s to-do list, but that should not deter anyone else. Based on a novel by Delphine Coulin, this is an affectionate and touching look at the absurdities of life as an illegal, and at its heart are two charming performances.A splendid tracking shot which opens the film moves through a blingy hotel from the choreographed celebrations of a very white wedding through to the crowded chaos of the multi-ethnic kitchen. In a minute directors Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano have deftly ferried us into Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The fault-lines of human relationships are tested in Swedish director Ruben Ostlund’s Force Majeure, and prove much more fraught than the physical threat inherent in the film’s glorious alpine landscapes. Its opening scenes capture a Swedish couple, on a skiing vacation in the Alps with their two young children, having their photographs taken by a resort snapper: as they readjust their poses, it seems like a search for a depiction of the perfect family. But beneath such hinted ideals, there’s a heavy underlying level of unease bubbling, which will duly unravel over the course of the film’s Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
All the politicians lined up to chorus "Je suis Charlie" after the nauseating massacre of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in Paris in January, but three months later, how is that emotional declaration of solidarity against murderous extremism holding up? For this documentary, British Muslim Shaista Aziz went to Paris to find out.Her inquiries suggested that France is split in two over the issue of Western values versus Islamic fundamentalism. So is much of the rest of Europe, but France's rigorous insistence on maintaining the state's secular status, and therefore banning such faith-based Read more ...
ellin.stein
If anyone thinks high fashion is an airy-fairy world populated by flibbertigibbets preoccupied with frills and furbelows, Frédéric Tcheng’s feature-length documentary Dior and I, a behind-the-scenes account of the race to prepare the 2012 Christian Dior couture collection in record time, should set the record straight. This is a serious business, with investors’ money and employees’ jobs riding on the quality and execution of one person’s artistic vision. In fact, in this aspect, and in the number of dedicated and highly skilled craftspeople it employs, launching a collection resembles Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Saul Dibb dispenses with the first half of Irene Nemirovsky’s great novel Suite Française in about a minute. Grainy newsreel footage disposes of the Fall of France in 1940, then it’s on to the occupation of Bussy, the country town where Lucille (Michelle Williams) falls for gentlemanly German officer Bruno (Matthias Schoenaerts, pictured below with Williams). Their unconsummated, forbidden affair under the gimlet gaze of mother-in-law Madame Angellier (Kristin Scott Thomas) is the focus of this plainly filmed period romance, as the posters suggest it will be. Lovers of the novel will be Read more ...
Sarah Kent
The sea is the theme uniting Simon Faithfull’s mid-career retrospective. It makes the port of Calais the perfect host for this splendid exhibition and, to put you in the mood, ideally you should make the crossing by boat. Faithfull spent six days going back and forth, back and forth on the P&O ferry between Dover and Calais. He passed the time – one and a half hours each way – sketching on his iPhone things that caught his eye, including a luggage trolley, a man reading (pictured below right), a waiting lifeboat, docking in Calais. More than 50 of these delightful drawings are on show; Read more ...