A la française: food & fashion films

Fashion · Film
If you are me, you’re going to the movies this weekend. You’re going to skip “Rush,” but there are two oh-so-French movies opening, one which I have seen and recommend highly. I loved “Haute Cuisine.”  Hortense Laborie (Catherine Frot), a renowned chef from Perigord, is astonished when the President of the Republic (Jean d’Ormesson) appoints ...

“Un Flic,” c’est fantastique

Film
A cool flick … concerns un flic. Alain Delon plays a French cop (“un flic”) who spends his days and nights chasing criminals, but doesn’t see the crook right under his nose. Simon (Richard Crenna) a smooth nightclub owner, works with a small crew to execute daring heists with big payoffs, while the la belle ...

Exceptional French film to spool at Laemmle Theatres 1

Film
Laemmle Theatres and Rialto Pictures present Marcel Carné’s Port of Shadows (1938) in a new DCP restoration featuring an all-new translation and subtitles by Lenny Borger. When Jean (Jean Gabin), a deserter from the Colonial Army, arrives in Le Havre searching for a place to lie low, he doesn’t expect to wind up in the ...

Southwest Chamber Music’s French Chef-inspired performances @ The Huntington

Music
I’m attending a beautiful chamber music concert in San Marino, just south of Pasadena, this weekend. It’s the Southwest Chamber Music Summer Festival at The Huntington. It’s part of a beautiful themed food & music summer festival celebrating the centenary of the French Chef, Julia Child. Child was born in Pasadena. Her years in post-WWII ...

Canapes and CLOCLO made COL*COA cool

Film
No one does it like the French. No one, no way, no how. COL*COA (City of Lights*City of Angels), the annual French film festival in Los Angeles, just wrapped up at the Director’s Guild of America building on Sunset Boulevard. The festival, now in its 16th year and masterminded by the incredibly hard-working Francois Truffart, ...

Pierre Étaix’s “Heureux Anniversaire” (1962) screened @ the Academy 1

Film
An exquisite evening at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences on Wednesday night, when two beautifully refurbished films by the comic French filmmaker, Pierre Étaix, 82, got rare American screenings. Étaix, who started as young man in circus and remained faithful to clowns, casting them in cameo roles in his films, was present ...

“Je ne suis pas contente de tout,” says Claude Bessy. 1

Dance · Film
The film I loved most of the four I saw at the Dance Camera West festival in June was Fabrice Herrault’s beautifully constructed documentary about his former ballet instructor, Claude Bessy, Les lignes d’une Vie (Traces of a Life). Herrault, a dance professor at the Juilliard School and a respected private coach, has made one ...

Roland Petit est mort 2

Dance
Choreographer Roland Petit, a giant of contemporary ballet — he more or less pioneered the genre — died this weekend. Petit’s lifelong involvement with ballet, creating 100+ works, gave him two enduring credits: Carmen (1949) and Le Jeune Homme et la Mort, a dramatic ballet set to a Bach passacaglia, with scenario by Jean Cocteau ...

René Blum and his Ballets Russes get another go-round in new book 1

Dance
Blum’s female universe, bountiful & beautiful, en route to New York, 1938 (photo courtesy of the author, click for detail) “In October 1938, the company sailed to the United States with the new Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo under the artistic direction of [Léonide] Massine and [René] Blum, who was billed as founder … for a ...

Bertrand Blier to Gérard Depardieu @ COLCOA: ‘trop gros pour moi’

Film
depardieu/farley, snl “I always think about Gérard Depardieu when I create a role,” said Bertrand Blier, who since 1974 has made eight films with France’s premier actor. “Even if it’s a woman. Even if it’s an animal. Sometimes there’s a big piece of furniture — it’s Depardieu.” Blier was free-associating at the daily afternoon ‘Happy ...