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CULTURE

French films with English subtitles to watch in January 2024

Lost in Frenchlation - the cinema club that screens French films with English subtitles - has a strong offering for January 2024, including a swashbuckling adventure and a blockbuster comedy.

Published: 21 December 2023 08:28 CET
French films with English subtitles to watch in January 2024
(Photo by LOIC VENANCE / AFP)

Lost in Frenchlation isn’t slowing down in its mission to introduce anglophones to French cinema. As 2024 dawns, it has arranged seven screenings in the first month alone.

Here’s what’s on offer.

Soudain Seuls (Suddenly Alone)

Details  Friday, January 5th, at Club de L’Étoile (14, rue Troyon, Paris). Themed walking tour starting at 5pm, drinks from 7pm, screening at 8pm. Tickets €8-€10 available here.

Thomas Bidegain’s castaway drama stars Gilles Lellouche and Mélanie Thierry as a couple whose planned relationship-saving round-the-world sailing adventure turns into a battle for life and death after a violent storm off the South American coast forces them to seek shelter in an abandoned whaling station.

La Vénus d’Argent (Spirit of Ecstasy)

Details  Thursday, January 11th, at Luminor (20 Rue du Temple, Paris). Drinks from 7pm, screening at 8pm, followed by a Q&A with director Héléna Klotz. Tickets €7-€11 available here.

The 24-year-old daughter (Jeanne Francoeur) of a single police officer father sets out to make it in the world of finance – and discovers money isn’t the root of all happiness.

Vigneronnes (Winegrowers)

Details  Sunday, January 14th, at Luminor (20 Rue du Temple, Paris). Wine and cheese tasting with Emily Lester Fouilleroux from 7pm, screening at 8pm. Tickets €7-€11 available here.

Film-maker Guillaume Bodin follows a handful of female winemakers in this heartstring-tugging documentary.

La Fille de son Père (No Love Lost)

Details  Friday, January 19th, at L’Entrepôt (7 Rue Francis de Pressensé, Paris). Drinks from 7pm, Screening at 8pm, followed by a Q&A with director Erwan Le Duc. Tickets €7-€8.50 available here.

A bittersweet, occasionally laugh-out-loud tale of a single father who – as his daughter turns 16 – recognises his ex-wife during a television news report. The past, as it is wont to do, duly resurfaces in chaotic style… Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, and Céleste Brunnquell star.

Chien de la Casse (Junkyard Dog)

Details  Sunday, January 21st, at Le Balzac (1 Rue Balzac, Paris). Drinks from 7pm, Screening at 8pm, followed by a Q&A with director Erwan Le Duc. Tickets €3.50 on the door, or available online here.

First love intrudes on the childhood friendship of two young men (Anthony Bajon and Raphaël Quenard) in the sleepy south of France.

Les Trois Mousquetaires: Milady (The Three Musketeers: Milady)

Details  Thursday, January 25th, at L’Arlequin (76 Rue de Rennes, Paris). Women of Paris tour from 4:30pm, Drinks from 7pm, Screening at 8pm. Tickets €8.50 – €11.

Swashes are buckled from the opening prison-break-with-moat-dive scene to the last while Eva Green smoulders in the second instalment of Martin Bourboulon’s hectic 21st-century take on the classic French tale.

Bienvenue Chez les Ch’tis (Welcome to the Sticks)

Details  Monday, January 29th, at Luminor (20 Rue du Temple, Paris). Drinks from 7pm, stand-up comedy with Hugo Gertner and screening at 8pm. Tickets €12 – €16.

Post office mandarin Kad Merad is transferred from his cushy and only slightly fraudulently obtained job in the Côte d’Azur to a one-horse town in the far north of France. Dany Boon directs and stars in the box-office smash of a feelgood comedy. 

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CULTURE

Can Costner lead the revenge of France’s much-mocked Kevins?

In 1990s France, amidst the Pierres and the Jean-Claudes, a Hollywood hero with all-American good looks inspired a new name craze.

Published: 19 May 2024 16:52 CEST
Can Costner lead the revenge of France's much-mocked Kevins?

The era of the Kevin — or Kev-een as the French pronounce it — had arrived, ushered in by the passions unleashed by a moustachioed Kevin Costner in his epic directorial debut, “Dances with Wolves”.

Suddenly, little Kevins were to be found the length and breadth of France.

But it wasn’t all plain sailing for these young ambassadors of Americana.

As Kevin Costner, now aged 69, prepares for his much-anticipated comeback at the Cannes Film Festival, AFP looks at how his French namesakes went from hero to zero and back again:

Je m’appelle Kevin

Celtic in origin, hailing from the Irish name “Caoimhin” after a hermit monk who lived in a stone cell in a glacial valley, the Kevin craze was sparked by not one but two huge Hollywood films.

In 1990 two million French people flocked to see the antics of a young boy called Kevin battling to defend his family home from burglars in “Home Alone”.

A year later, “Dances with Wolves”, which scooped seven Oscars, topped the French box office, pulling in a whopping seven million viewers.

The impact on birth certificates was immediate — that year Kevin was the most popular boy’s name in France, chosen for just over 14,000 newborns, according to data compiled by AFP.

The wave continued with over 10,000 baby Kevins a year until 1995 when it dipped to some 8,000 and progressively dwindled thereafter.

Mocked and shamed 

By the time the Kevins hit adolescence in the early 2000s, Costner’s star power had faded and the name had become shrouded in stigma, associated with lower classes picking exotic-sounding names drawn from pop culture.

Sociologist Baptiste Coulmont studied the social determinism of French names by comparing the names with the childrens’ exam grades.

Between 2012-2020 four percent of Kevins received the top “very good” grade for the baccalaureate exam taken at the end of high school, compared with 18 percent for the classic bourgeois name Augustin.

For director Kevin Fafournoux, who grew up in what he calls an “ordinary” family in central France and is making a documentary called “Save the Kevins”, the name “spells redneck, illiterate, geek, annoying” for many in his country.

“All this has impacted my life and that of other Kevins, whether in terms of our self-confidence, professional credibility or in relationships,” he says in its trailer.

In Germany, which also saw a wave of Kevins in the early 1990s, the negative stereotypes conferred on parents who give children exotic-sounding names from other cultures has a name: Kevinismus.

“Kevin is not a name but a diagnosis,” said one teacher scathingly in a 2009 article by Die Zeit newspaper about little Kevins, Chantals and Angelinas being labelled problem children.

Shedding the stigma

As the years pass, Kevins have become doctors, academics, politicians and much more — and attitudes have shifted.

“There are tens of thousands of Kevins in France, they are everywhere in society and can no longer be associated with one background,” Coulmont told The Guardian newspaper in an interview in 2022.

That year, two Kevins were elected to parliament for the far-right National Rally (RN).

“Will the Kevins finally have their revenge?” asked Le Point magazine.

The RN’s president is himself a fresh-faced 28-year-old, who grew up in a high-rise housing estate on the outskirts of Paris. He also carries a name with clear American overtones: Jordan Bardella.

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