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FILM

French TV and films to watch in February

Classic films, new comedy, water-cooler drama, culinary reality, and world-class sport all vie for our attention in the shortest month of the year.

French TV and films to watch in February
Image: Totems / Amazon Prime

Here we check out the best of what’s on offer across French TV and streaming platforms in February.

Claude Berri collection – Netflix

From February 1st

Oh, Netflix … with not one but seven films from the great Claude Berri available on the first day of February, you are spoiling us.

The on-demand platform will add Tchao Pantin, Jean de Florette, Manon des Sources, Uranus, Le Vieil Homme et l’Enfant, Germinal, and his penultimate film Ensemble, c’est tout. Try to watch them all – but if you can’t, start with Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources … then watch them all.

The Winter Olympics – France 2 and France 3

From February 4th to February 20th

Some 87 French athletes have travelled across the world to take part in the Winter Games in Beijing.

There are plenty of reasons to question this event, but for these athletes just getting here is the culmination of many years of effort – and there’ll be some epic performances on (artificial) snow and ice during the competition.

Une intime conviction – Netflix

From February 6th

Antoine Raimbault’s courtroom drama, based on the true story of the two trials of a Toulouse law professor following the disappearance of his wife in the early years of the 21st century.

All but one of the actors play real people who were involved in the actual case – Olivier Gourmet plays current Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti, who was involved in the case in his previous career as a lawyer.

Prête-moi ta main – Disney Plus

From February 11th

Middle-aged Parisian bachelor Alain Chabat is in no rush to get married. But, when his devoted mother Bernadette Lafont, and five sisters agree that he should settle down, they set Luis up for a series of doomed dates.

To stop their well-meaning match-making, he asks his best friend’s sister Charlotte Gainsbourg to pose as his new girlfriend. We think you know where this is going…

Top Chef – M6

Wednesday, February 16th, and Replay services from February 17th

Good news and bad news for fans of culinary reality shows. Top Chef returns this month to dominate Wednesday evening schedules for weeks to come, with its usual mix of cooking challenges (think the French version of MasterChef).

This time, sadly, there’s no Michel Sarran to lead the yellow team. He’s been replaced by Glenn Viel – the youngest chef in the world to be awarded three Michelin stars – as the fourth chef leader, alongside Philippe Etchebest, Hélène Darroze and Paul Pairet. 

 

Totems – Amazon Prime

From February 18th

1965. The frozen heart of the Cold War. A French rocket scientist is sent out into the field on an impossible covert mission – and promptly falls for a Soviet spy. Niels Schneider, Vera Kolesnikova, Lambert Wilson and José Garcia star in what’s already being described as ‘Event TV’.

Le Chant du Loup – Netflix

From February 20th

As if seven Claude Berri films and a courtroom drama weren’t enough, this high-tension undersea thriller with Francois Civil and Omar Sy will have you biting your nails to the quick later in the month.

On board a French nuclear submarine, everything rests on a man with the gift of recognising every sound. Deemed infallible, he makes an error that puts the rescue mission and the crew in danger. It’s directed by Antonin Baudry – who’s also a diplomat specialising in cultural affairs, comic book author, and screenwriter. You have to wonder how he finds the time…

Weekend Family – Disney Plus

From February 23rd

Eric Judor stars in Disney Plus’s first French production – a comedy – as a three-by-three father, with three daughters by three former partners, whose already complicated life becomes even more difficult when he falls in love for a fourth time. 

Comme des Garçons – Amazon Prime

From February 25th

A womanising sports journalist in late 1960s France organises a women’s football match for his paper’s annual fete, and ropes in the editor’s assistant to help him. Little do the warring pair realise that they’re about to create the first women’s football team in the country.

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LIVING IN FRANCE

Explained: What is the law in France on prostitution

As the European court of human rights upholds France's laws on prostitution, here's a look at what the law says on the buying and selling of sex.

Explained: What is the law in France on prostitution

On Thursday the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of a French law from 2016 that radically overhauled the country’s laws on prostitution.

So what is the position now in the country that became famous for its legalised brothels, immortalised in the works of painters including Toulouse-Lautrec, Ingrès and Manet? 

History

It was Napoleon who laid out France’s long-standing legal code on lawful but regulated prostitution which saw state-sanctioned brothels known as maisons de tolérance or maisons close opening up in French towns and cities.

The legal position in France remained for a long time that prostitution was legal – albeit under tightly controlled conditions; registered brothels which were ‘discreet’ in appearance, prostitutes who were also registered and subject to regular medical inspections.

However in the period after World War II a series of laws were passed that first outlawed brothels and then criminalised behaviour including soliciting for sex, pimping and sex tourism.

The 2016 law

In 2016 a radical shakeup of the law was proposed, aimed at shifting the balance of power in favour of the people (mostly women) who sell sex.

It first repealed some older laws including the ‘Sarkozy law’ introduced in 2003 that made it a criminal offence to “be present wearing revealing clothing at a location known to be used for prostitution”.

But the main thrust of the law was to make it illegal to buy sex – but not illegal to sell sex, or to solicit it.

The idea was to remove the fear of criminalisation for people selling sex and therefore remove some of the barriers to people seeking help – for example to report a crime. The bill also came with a package of measures designed to help people working as prostitutes to leave the profession, if they want to, and enable them to leave exploitative or dangerous situations. 

It also included measures to give residency cards to the estimated 30,000 foreign people working as prostitutes in France – it is estimated that around 80 percent of sex workers in France are foreigners, the majority from eastern Europe or Africa.

Has it worked?

The intention was undoubtedly good, but many argue it has not worked – including the group of 20 sex workers who took France to the European Court of Human Rights over the law.

They say that criminalising customers means that sex workers are forced to work in more isolated and therefore dangerous places and that the drop in custom means that sex workers are being forced to accept customers that they might in the past have turned away.

The continuing ban on brothels means that sex workers must work alone, which raises their level of risk.

The main French prostitutes union Strass says: “It’s been a catastrophic law for our security and our health.”

However, the European judges rules that there is no evidence that the law itself was making sex work unsafe.

Judges said they were “fully aware of the undeniable difficulties and risks to which prostituted people are exposed while exercising their activity”, including their health and safety.

But they added that these were “already present and observed before the adoption of the law” in 2016, being attributed at the time to the since-repealed law against soliciting.

“There is no consensus on the question of whether the negative effects described by the claimants are directly caused by the… criminalisation of buying sexual acts, or their sale, or are inherent or intrinsic to the phenomenon of prostitution… or a whole array of social and behavioural factors,” the judges said.

So what exactly does the law say now?

Buying sex is illegal, punishable by a fine of up to €1,500, rising to €3,750 for repeat offenders. This applies whatever the situation – street prostitution, in a brothel or massage parlour or via an online transaction. 

Clubs including fetish clubs and swingers clubs are legal.

How strictly this law is enforced varies widely according to both place and time.

Selling sex is legal, as is soliciting for sex, however owning or operating a brothel is illegal. It is illegal to live off the earnings of a prostitute or to help or pressure someone to prostitute themselves.

Prostitutes are required to pay tax on their earnings and make an annual tax declaration in the same way as all other self-employed workers in France.

Prostitutes have a union and during the Covid pandemic qualified for furlough payments when they could not work.

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