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CULTURE

Screenings of French films with English subtitles in July 2022

Paris-based cinema club Lost in Frenchlation is showing two French films with English subtitles this month before taking a well-earned summer break. Here's what's coming up.

Published: 1 July 2022 13:43 CEST
Lost in Frenchlation is a cinema club in Paris that screens French films with English subtitles.
Lost in Frenchlation is a cinema club in Paris that screens French films with English subtitles. (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP)

Two events in July are hosted by Lost in Frenchlation, a Paris-based cinema club that offers English speakers who may not be fluent in French the chance to enjoy French films, by screening new releases with English subtitles to help viewers follow the story.

The club has organised two screenings this month – one of them followed by a Q&A with the director, while the other is preceded by a stand-up show – before it takes a well-earned break ready to return in September.

Here are the films you can catch this month.

Friday, July 8th, 7pm

Les Goûts et les couleurs (Not My Type)

Rebecca Marder heads the cast of Michel Leclerc’s smart drama about a talented singer whose dream of recording an album with a 1970s rock icon (a heavily made-up Judith Chemla) threatens to turn sour when the old musician defies phrase and fable and actually dies. 

Her efforts to persuade the old rocker’s closest living relative (Félix Moati) to allow her release the record are complicated by the fact he likes neither his famous kin or her music.

The screening at Club de L’Etoile cinema, on Rue Troyon, will be followed by a Q&A with director Leclerc.

Tickets  (€10, €8 for concessions) are available here

Friday, July 15th, 7pm

Irréductible (Employee of the Month)

Office politics go bad when zealous ministerial inspector Pascale Arbillot reckons without peaceful civil service worker Jérôme Commandeur (who also directs) in this laugh-out-loud comedy. 

Her job is to cut waste and costs; his is to enjoy as quiet and comfortable a career as possible. Unable to get him to leave his ‘job for life’, she transfers him to some of the least hospitable places on Earth she can find… Chaos, as the best movie billings should say, ensues.

The film, at cinéma L’Arlequin, will be preceded by a stand-up show and the chance to enjoy a cocktail or two.

Tickets (€15, €13 for concessions) to the screening and the comedy show are available here

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CULTURE

Iconic French painting to make comeback in true colours at Louvre

A world-famous painting of a bare-chested woman leading French revolutionaries is this week to reveal its true colours after restorers cleansed it from decades of varnish and grime.

Published: 1 May 2024 07:44 CEST
Iconic French painting to make comeback in true colours at Louvre

The public will be able to admire Eugene Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” in its full glory at the Louvre museum from Thursday.

“We’re the first generation to rediscover the colour” of the work, said an enthusiastic Sebastien Allard, director of paintings at the Paris museum.

Delacroix painted the artwork to commemorate France’s July Revolution of 1830.

He depicted a woman personifying Liberty brandishing the French flag and leading armed men over the bodies of the fallen.

The image has since become iconic, in the 20th century even appearing on French banknotes.

The French state bought the painting in 1831 during its first public exhibition, and it has been housed at the Louvre since 1874.

A national treasure, it has only ever travelled outside France once — to Japan in 1999.

Over the years restorers had applied eight layers of varnish in a bid to brighten its colours, but instead ended up drowning them under a coating of drab yellow.

The colours, “the whites, the shadows — all of this ended up melting together under these yellowish layers,” Allard said.

“Grime and dust” had also become trapped in the varnish.

‘Enchanting’

After six months of painstaking restoration — the painting’s first since 1949 — a bright blue sky has re-emerged above the Notre-Dame cathedral in the work’s background.

White smoke bursts from the men’s guns and dust more clearly clings to the air above the Paris barricade.

Benedicte Tremolieres, one of the two restorers to clean the canvas, said it was “enchanting” to see the painting reveal its secrets.

Her colleague Laurence Mugniot agreed.

“Delacroix hid tiny dabs of blue, white and red all over in a subtle sprinkling to echo the flag,” she said.

She pointed for example to the “blue eye with a speck of red” of one of the characters.

Because of its size — 2.6 by 3.25 meters — all restoration work had to be done on site.

Curator Come Fabre said specialists first thoroughly inspected the artwork using X-ray, ultraviolet and infrared radiation, comparing what they found with archive images of the painting.

The restorers then carried out tests on tiny fractions of the work.

Peering through a magnifying glass or microscope, “they even discovered that certain alterations, including a brown mark on Liberty’s dress, had been added after Delacroix and could therefore be removed,” Fabre said.

The curator said it was no wonder the painting had become such a symbol.

After the end of France’s German occupation during World War II, it appeared on banknotes and stamps, he said.

In more recent years, French street artist Pascal Boyart depicted Liberty leading a group of “yellow vest” protesters.

And adaptations of the painting have also appeared at protests in Bulgaria and Hong Kong.

“Delacroix’s brilliant idea is to have managed to represent unstoppable collective action in movement, with men rallying around a woman embodying the idea of liberty,” Fabre said.

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