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CULTURE

Five movie treats for English-speaking film fans in Paris in October

Paris-based cinema club Lost in Frenchlation is back with more screenings of French films with English subtitles this month. Here's what's coming up.

Published: 5 October 2022 15:43 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)

The club offers English speakers who may not be fluent in French the chance to enjoy French cinema, by screening new releases and cinema classics with English subtitles to help viewers follow along.

Five films will be screened in October – including one of the greatest French films of all time in honour of one of the pioneers of the New Wave.

Screenwriter and director Alice Winocour’s 2022 movie Revoir Paris (Paris Memories) kicks off the month’s movie calendar on October 7th at L’Entrepôt cinema, Rue Francis de Pressensé, Paris 14. 

Traumatised by a terror attack in a Paris bistro three months previously, a woman (four-time César nominee Virginie Efira) decides to investigate her memories and retrace her steps on that fateful day.

The evening begins at 7pm with pre-screening drinks. The film starts at 8pm. Tickets, at €8.50 (€7 concessions), are available online here.

Just over a week later, on October 15th, Le Tigre et le Président (The Vanished President) will be screened at Club de L’Étoile, 14, rue Troyon, Paris.

Jean-Marc Peyrefitte’s debut feature is a based-on-a-true-story comedy that follows the election and period in office of eccentric politician Paul Deschanel, who was President of France from February 18th to September 21st 1920. Jacques Gamblin and André Dussollier are absolutely astonishing in the main roles.

The evening begins at 7pm with pre-screening drinks. The film starts at 8pm. Tickets, which cost €10 (€8 concessions) are available online here

La Page Blanche (Eloïse’s Journey) is the big film on October 20th at Luminor Hôtel de Ville, 20 Rue du Temple, Paris 4.

Sara Giraudeau stars as Eloïse, a woman with no memory of who she is – who sets off on a journey of self-rediscovery, only to discover she does not like what she learns about herself and decides it’s time for a fresh start.

The evening begins at 7pm with pre-screening drinks. The film starts at 8pm. Tickets, which cost €10 (€8 concessions) are available online here.

Head back to Luminor Hôtel de Ville, on October 23rd for a tribute to the late, great Jean-Luc Godard, with a special screening of his iconic feature-length debut A Bout de Souffle (Breathless), which stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg.

Recognised as one of the greatest movies ever made, A Bout de Souffle follows a wandering criminal (Belmondo) and his American girlfriend (Seberg) as they try to avoid the attentions of the police in Paris.

The evening begins at 7pm with pre-screening drinks. The film starts at 8pm. Tickets, which cost €10 (€8 concessions) are available online here.

Fans of New Wave cinema can also take part in a walking movie tour taking in some of the Paris locations for Breathless, Tous les garçons s’appellent Patrick, Vivre sa vie, and La Chinoise, as well as some of the places the visionary director lived and frequented.

Tickets for the walking tour – which starts at 5.30pm – cost €15 and are available online here.

A wine-tasting session precedes the screening of the final film of the Month, Ivan Calberac’s La Dégustation (The Tasting), at L’Arlequin cinema, Rue de Rennes, Paris 6.

Isabelle Carré stars as a woman with a big heart and no one to share it with – except her cat, her embittered mom, and a group of homeless people for whom she prepares a gourmet dinner at the local church every week. 

Then, one day, she meets misanthropic wine merchant Jacques (Bernard Campan). And everything changes.  

The film starts at 8pm. Tickets, which cost €10 (€8 concessions) are available online here.

The pre-screening wine-tasting session is €20. Tickets 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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