Aretha Franklin, R.I.P.

I grew up listening to her. Musically speaking, she was a part of my 1960s childhood and early adolescence. There are a number of Top 10 and Top 20 lists of her greatest songs out there but this is my personal no.1.

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2018 César awards

[update below]

France’s Oscars, if one doesn’t know. The ceremony is tomorrow (Friday)—two days before the US Academy Awards, as always—at the Salle Pleyel (in the 8th arrondissement). The full list of nominees is here. Leading with thirteen nominations each are Au revoir là-haut (See You Up There) and ‘120 battements par minute’ (BPM: Beats Per Minute), followed by Le Sens de la fête (C’est la vie) with ten, ‘Barbara’ with nine, ‘Petit Paysan’ (Bloody Milk) with eight, ‘Grave’ (Raw) six, and ‘Le Redoutable’ with five. I’ve seen almost all the films in the top categories, have posts on several, and will of more, hopefully soon. For those that won’t get a post, here’s a brief mention.

Barbara, by Mathieu Amalric. A biopic of sorts of the French chanteuse—an icon in France, unknown in the US—whose heyday was in the 1960s and ’70s. I say “of sorts” as it’s a mise en abyme—a film of the making of a film about Barbara, with Jeanne Balibar (Best Actress nominee) playing the actress who plays Barbara; and Amalric (Best Director nominee) the director of the film of the film. Let me just come out and say that I disliked it. I found it insufferable and couldn’t wait for it to be over. It’s the kind of film that critics praise—as they did, including in the Hollywood press—but that regular movie-goers do not. I’m fairly conventional when it comes to biopics: I like them to proceed chronologically and cover the high points in the personality’s life—unless if it’s very specifically just of a slice of the life—and if it’s of a singer, to hear his/her best known songs. ‘Barbara’ (nominated for Best Film, BTW) does not do this. As one critic put it, the pic is “dreamlike” and “opaque,” which tells you as much as you need to know. À propos, there was also a biopic last year of the Egyptian-Italian-French chanteuse Dalida—a contemporary of Barbara’s and an icon in France herself—and that was indeed a more conventional film in the genre. It has been nominated for no Césars but audiences liked it far more than ‘Barbara’ (or the critics). I found it sufficiently entertaining myself, so on this I’m with the vox populi.

Django, by Étienne Comar. Another biopic on a famous French singer: the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt (1910-53), played by the invariably excellent Reda Kateb (Best Actor nominee).This one focuses on a slice of his life, during the Nazi occupation of France, beginning in 1943, with Rienhardt, who was a Sinti Roma, playing publicly in Paris (mainly at the Folies Bergères) at the sufferance of jazz-loving officers in the German high command, who could have packed him off to a concentration or death camp at any moment. Advised by his mistress, Louise (Cécile de France), who’s in the Resistance, that he was in danger, Reinhardt flees with his family to Thonon-les-Bains on Lake Geneva—and where there’s a Roma encampment—to await clandestine passage to Switzerland. While in Thonon, he is forced to deal with German officers, some of whom like jazz, others who—being better Nazis—do not. It’s unclear in the film if he actually makes it into Switzerland but he did survive the war, with the final scene of him in Paris in May ’45, performing a non-jazz score he composed, “Requiem pour mes frères tsiganes,” in remembrance of the Roma who perished at the hands of the Nazis. ‘Django’ is an entertaining, well-done biopic, worth seeing for Reinhardt’s great music—of which there’s a lot in the film, played by the The Rosenberg Trio—Kateb’s performance, and as it’s an interesting story about a major musician of the 20th century.

La Promesse de l’aube (Promise at Dawn), by Éric Barbier. Yet another biopic, this of Romain Gary (played by Pierre Niney), based on his best-selling (in France) 1960 autobiographical novel, which is as much about his strong-willed mother (Charlotte Gainsbourg, Best Actress nominee), who sacrifices all for her son, as about himself. Gary (1914-80) had quite a life: a Lithuanian Jew, brought to France at age 14 and converted to Catholicism; World War II aviator who flew missions for the Free French; French diplomat in the immediate postwar era; a major literary figure and who won two Goncourt prizes (under pseudonyms); and who had a tumultuous love life—he was Jean Seberg’s second husband—was a tortured soul, and ended his life with a gunshot to the head. The stuff of novels and biopics. This one is classic in its structure. It was a box office hit in France and audiences loved it. It may be seen.

Un beau soleil intérieur (Let the Sunshine In), by Claire Denis. Isabelle (Juliette Binoche, Best Actress nominee) is a 50-something Parisian artist from les beaux quartiers (naturally), divorced (of course), and in search of true love (what else?). And though she has no problem landing lovers—she has a string of them, of various ages and professions—she cannot settle with one, as she just doesn’t know what she wants. The pic is, to quote one review, a “delightful foray into romantic kinda-comedy.” Quoting another, it is a “grownup film, inspired by…Roland Barthes [and] a sophisticated delight.” It is indeed the kind of film that critics effuse over—as they do of anything directed by Claire Denis—but that audiences do not at all. The discrepancy between the two camps is particularly striking in France, with (most) critics giving it the thumbs way up and spectateurs the total opposite. As one may suspect, I’m with the latter. I found the movie trivial and a waste of time. I did not like Isabelle—perhaps partly because I’m not a big fan of Juliette Binoche to begin with—and couldn’t have cared less about her états d’âme. And the final scene with Gérard Depardieu, playing a radiesthesist, is ridiculous. The mere fact that the co-screenwriter was Christine Angot, who’s a complete nutcase, should have been a forewarning. A cinephile friend of mine did like the film, however—though two others shared my view—so this is one over which reasonable persons of highbrow taste may disagree.

Numéro Une (Number One), by Tonie Marshall. Emmanuelle Blachey (Emmanuelle Devos, Best Actress nominee), also 50-something, is an ambitious engineer climbing the ladder at a major French corporation in the renewable energy sector, who succeeds in breaking through the glass ceiling to become CEO. But she then runs into all sorts of problems, not a small part of which are related to her being female in what is—and certainly in France—a very male world. It’s a feminist film, thus timely in this age of #MeToo and #BalanceTonPorc, but is not without problems. Devos is very good, as always, but I found the plot overly complicated. It’s hard to follow and one gets lost. This review gets it exactly right. The film may certainly be seen but make sure you have a scorecard and pay very close attention to who is who and who says what.

Monsieur & Madame Adelman (Mr. & Mrs. Adelman), by Nicolas Bedos. I will let THR critic Jordan Mintzer do the talking here: “Chronicling four decades in the life of a quintessentially French couple, Mr. & Mrs. Adelman reveals the highs and lows, passions and betrayals, pontifications and intellectual masturbation of a writer [Victor (Nicolas Bedos)] and his wife [Sarah (Doria Tillier, Best Actress nominee)], from the 1970s to the present day. (…) Like a bottle of supermarket red wine masquerading as a vintage Chateau Margaux, the film purports to be a classy French dramedy but winds up leaving a bad taste in your mouth. It’s filled with energy and a certain amount of wit, but its premise is so overstretched, its characters so cliched and its late third-act reversal so ridiculous, that it’s hard to take any of it seriously. (…)” Tout à fait. I wasn’t bowled over by this movie, as one may surmise, though Allociné spectateurs gave it the thumbs up (as did my wife). Chacun son goût.

Grave (Raw), by Julia Ducournau. This one’s a horror movie, which completely passed under my radar screen when it opened a year ago, and despite its very good reviews (including in the US). A mini-synopsis: Justine (Garance Marillier, Most Promising Actress nominee) is a 16-year-old overachiever from a family of militant vegetarians, who is about to enter veterinary school, where her older sister is a student. She’s never tasted meat in her life but that changes during the intense hazing of orientation week… The movie, in the words of one (tongue-in-cheek) reviewer, “tells the all-too-common tale [emphasis added] of a vegetarian woman becoming a cannibal after being forced to eat raw rabbit liver. This relatively innocent tasting quickly develops into a lust for man-flesh as…Justine turns from a naive freshman into blood-thirsty cannibal.” No less. When the pic was screened at the Toronto film festival, paramedics apparently had to be called in when members of the audience fainted. Oy vey. Reminds me of reading about George Romero’s ‘Night of the Living Dead’ back when it came out, of theaters posting warnings and shell shocked persons who saw it necessitating psychiatric intervention (I first saw it with friends in college—at a midnight screening and no doubt after having smoked an illicit substance; we thought it was a hoot). If one is an aficionado of the horror genre, then ‘Grave’ may certainly be seen. If not, then it need not be seen.

Marvin ou la Belle Éducation (Reinventing Marvin), by Anne Fontaine. A touching film about a boy growing up in a trashy, lower class family in a village in the Vosges, who becomes aware of his queer identity as he hits puberty, is bullied at school, and has to confront the incomprehension of his IQ-challenged parents and siblings (his father is played by the very good Grégory Gadebois). Named Marvin Bijou, he is saved, as it were, by the school principal, who enrolls him in her theater class and which changes his life. He ends up in Paris in his late teens, changes his name to Martin Clément (Finnegan Oldfield, Most Promising Actor nominee), and joins an avant-garde theater troupe, helped along by nice people (including Isabelle Huppert in a cameo role, playing herself). The film is inspired by Édouard Louis’ best-selling 2014 autobiography En finir avec Eddie Bellegueule (in English: The End of Eddy).

I’ll have posts soon on Petit Paysan (excellent), Le Redoutable (better than expected), 120 battements par minute (very good), Ava (not bad), and Jeune Femme (mixed).

My ballot:

BEST FILM: ‘Au revoir là-haut’.
‘Patients’ and ‘Petit Paysan’ are worthy contenders but they’ve also been nominated for Best First Film. ‘120 BPM’ will probably win (for PC reasons).

BEST DIRECTOR: Albert Dupontel for ‘Au revoir là-haut’.
Logically.

BEST ACTOR: Jean-Pierre Bacri in ‘Le Sens de la Fête’.
Other nominees are worthy but Bacri is great and has never won this one.

BEST ACTRESS: Karin Viard in Jalouse.
There is no obvious choice here but Viard stands out in her role.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Laurent Lafitte in ‘Au revoir là-haut’.
He’s an excellent actor and totally convincing here.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Sara Giraudeau in ‘Petit Paysan’.
Pourquoi pas? Laure Calamy (‘Ava’) is the runner-up. Adèle Haenel (‘120 BPM’) has already won this one. Anaïs Demoustier is no doubt good in ‘La Villa’ but I did not see it.

MOST PROMISING ACTOR: Nahuel Pérez Biscayart in ‘120 BPM’.
Good acting in this film, by him along with all the others

MOST PROMISING ACTRESS: Camélia Jordana in Le Brio.
A strong category this year. Iris Bry (Les Gardiennes), Laetitia Dosch (‘Jeune Femme’), and Eye Haidara (‘Le Sens de la Fête’) are all very good but Jordana is tops.

BEST FIRST FILM: Patients and ‘Petit Paysan’ ex aequo.
A coin flip here. Both are far superior to the other three nominees.

BEST DOCUMENTARY: ‘I Am Not Your Negro’, by Raoul Peck.
Hands down. I liked ‘Visages, Villages’ by Agnès Varda and JR—didn’t everyone?—and ‘Carré 35’ is compelling. I haven’t seen ‘À voix haute: La force de la parole’ or Raymond Depardon’s ’12 Jours’.

BEST FOREIGN FILM: ‘Le Caire confidentiel’ (The Nile Hilton Incident).
One of the best movies of 2017, period. The Russian ‘Faute d’amour’ (Loveless) is a close second. ‘Dunkerque’ (Dunkirk) and ‘La La Land’ are overrated, and ‘The Square’ does not merit all the awards it’s received or been nominated for. The Belgian ‘Noces’ (A Wedding) is flawed. I haven’t seen ‘L’Échange des princesses’ (The Royal Exchange); as it’s manifestly a French film, I have no idea what it’s doing in this category.

UPDATE: ‘120 BPM’ won six awards—including Best Film, as expected—and ‘Au revoir là-haut’ five. The Hollywood Reporter’s dispatch is here. Libération’s film critics, who are not too impressed with the whole spectacle, weigh in here.

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Dolores O’Riordan & Hugh Masekela, R.I.P.

They both died, on January 15th and 23rd, respectively, as one is likely aware, as their deaths were international news stories. To be very honest, neither name rung a bell with me when I first the news, so did not feel personally affected. But then listening to their music on the radio reports and retrospectives, I realized that I was quite familiar with both of them indeed. I just had no idea. Like a lot of people, I suppose, I hear songs and artists—on the radio, at people’s homes, or just being out and about—that I like but can’t identify (thankfully there’s now Shazam, which I only learned about four or so years ago, when I finally succumbed and got a smart phone). As for Dolores O’Riordan and The Cranberries, they were great. I love her/their music: Zombie, of course, but also a lot of their other songs (playlist here).

Likewise with Hugh Masekela. I’m not a huge jazz fan (piano apart) but do like him and, I can say, always have (YouTube mix here). He does it for me: the South African beat and, bien entendu, the politics.

I’ve been travelling in the US for the past three weeks—from New York to Raleigh NC, and points in between—and have been neglecting the blog. Not that there haven’t been things to post about (it’s all Trump all the time here, if one is not aware). AWAV will be back up and running when I return to Paris this week.

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Johnny Hallyday, R.I.P.

When I learned early this morning that he had died—which I wasn’t expecting, as I had forgotten that he had terminal cancer—I knew that there would be practically no other story on the news here today. This is one of those deaths that millions of people—99.9% of them French—genuinely feel saddened by—including my wife, who said this morning that “Johnny” was almost like “un membre de la famille.” C’est-à-dire, la famille des Français. A friend of mine I saw today—a lawyer in his 60s with highbrow cultural tastes—concurred with my wife’s sentiments, saying that he had seen “Johnny” at least six times in concert over the decades. Almost everyone publicly commenting today is calling him a French “icon,” which is true. (If one is not French and thus doesn’t know much about this icon, see the obits in The New York Times and The Guardian).

Quant à moi, I have mentioned “Johnny” exactly once in the history of AWAV, in a post in May 2011 that was mainly on Bernard-Henri Lévy, in which, entre autres, I linked to a piece by the US libertarian journalist Matt Welch that skewered the French pseudo-philosopher. I thought Welch was witty and on-the-mark in his takedown of BHL, except for his very last sentence: “And another reminder that BHL is 10 times the national embarrassment to France than Jerry Lewis or even Johnny Hallyday ever was.” On the French-and-Jerry Lewis cliché, I have definitively settled that one here. As for Johnny Hallyday, this was my response to Welch

[The Johnny Hallyday] cliché—that he’s a cheap French imitation of Elvis Presley, not very good, and generally a joke—seems to be more English than American (as Americans mostly have no idea who he is). I actually used to think the same thing, and would roll my eyes and snicker every time my wife and French friends—almost all of them—would tell me how great a singer “Johnny” is. But then I realized that I didn’t really know his music. I’d never bothered to listen to it. He just seemed too weird of a personality. And too bizarre looking. But eight years ago, when Johnny turned 60 and had a concert at the Parc des Princes to mark the event—before 60,000 fans and a live TV audience of millions—I decided to open my mind and give him a look. It went for three hours and I watched it to the end. It was great! Johnny is a great rock ‘n’ roller! And a great stage performer too. Voilà. Now I understand why he is so beloved in this country (even if he is still a weird guy). Matt Welch and other Anglo-Saxon Johnny snickerers have no doubt never listened to his music. If they like rock and roll, they should.

The more I’ve listened to Hallyday’s music over the years—on my favorite music radio station and CDs we own—the more I will assert that he was indeed very good, and that it’s too bad the musically protectionist Anglo-Americans were not exposed to him. Check out this YouTube playlist. And for the social scientifically minded, see the analysis in Le Monde by sociologist Jean-Louis Fabiani, “‘Pourquoi Johnny Hallyday, c’était la France’.” Also this homage by my favorite conservative politician, Jean-Pierre Raffarin. If there’s anyone who could unite Frenchmen and women across the political spectrum, it was “Johnny.”

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Prince, R.I.P.

My social media news feed has been deluged with eulogies to him over the past eighteen hours. Just about everyone I know—and many more I don’t—is heaping praise on him, as one of the greatest musical artists in modern times. I won’t say he was my absolute favorite but I did like him. Of course. How could anyone of my generation not? He was an exceptionally talented and versatile musician, and amazing on stage (rewatching some of his concert videos, which I have on DVD—they’re impossible to find free online—confirms this). And ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ and ‘When Doves Cry’ are among the great pop hits of my early adult life (playlist here). One video that is online—thanks to the NFL—is Prince’s halftime performance at the 2007 Super Bowl in Miami, in the midst of a rainstorm. He was incredible. Watch it here. It’s a must. C’est tout c’que j’ai à dire.

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David Bowie, R.I.P.

I learned about it in the past hour. I had no idea he had terminal cancer, and apparently few outside his family did either. Everyone was taken by surprise, as France Inter has been saying since the news broke. He was one of my favorite singers—in the top five—from the moment I was turned on to ‘Ziggy Stardust’—one of the greatest rock albums of all time—at age 16, in precisely the fall of 1972. I never got to see him in concert, though did watch an entire one of his on ARTE in the past decade—I think it was Dublin and may or may not have been live—during which I kept telling myself ‘he is so cool’ and so excellent. Last May I went to the touring exhibition David Bowie Is at the Philharmonie de Paris. A great expo. Voilà, c’est tout c’que j’ai à dire. R.I.P.

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The Death of Klinghoffer

[update below]

The New York Met’s performance of the opera has gotten numerous Jews and others in the pro-Israel camp all worked up and bent out of shape, even though almost all of those who are protesting the opera’s staging—on account of its putative justifying of terrorism and backhanded antisemtism—haven’t actually seen it. Adam Shatz did see a dress rehearsal of the opera at the Met last weekend, however, and, in a review posted on the LRB blog, has pronounced it to be very good, hardly antisemitic, and that in no way apologizes for terrorism. As far as I’m concerned, if Adam says it is so, that means it is so.

UPDATE: Paul Berman has an essay in Tablet magazine, “Klinghoffer at the Met,” that is worth reading.

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