See an ardent movie with Ardant
Shauna, 70, and Pierre, 45, love each other passionately. Problem: beyond the age difference, he is married and a father. Something to destroy lives. So much for the pitch of young lovers, worn with finesse by Fanny Ardant, Melvil Poupaud and Cécile de France. Not a classic love triangle, but the story of an impossible love stopped in mid-flight. Initially, it was a screenplay by French filmmaker Solveig Anspach, who died at the age of 54 in 2015. Carine Tardieu took it over, not without emotion, to make it a delicate film on a subject where the slightest misstep is fatal. Fanny Ardant brings her vitality, her mystery, that of “a flamboyant woman who crosses existence on tiptoe”. We think, of course, of the beautiful film by Hal Ashby Harold et Maude (1971), and more dramatically to the case of Gabrielle Russier, this 32-year-old French teacher who fell in love with one of her students, who was convicted of kidnapping a minor and who committed suicide in 1969. The filmmaker André Cayatte made a successful film (4.5 million admissions), die from love, and Charles Aznavour, an unforgettable song. But it’s 2022 and The Young Lovers no longer cause a scandal.
The Young Lovers, indoors
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Summon the spirits with Archive 81
VHS, Super 8 and old reels… Dan restores all types of damaged videos. Royally paid by a nebulous company, he is responsible for giving new life to the videos shot by Melody Pendras, a young documentary filmmaker, between the walls of the Visser Building, a New York building ravaged by flames in 1994. Melody would have died in the ‘fire. Was she murdered because of her discoveries? A satanic sect practiced chilling rituals between the walls of the old building. The demon she invoked still seems to haunt the film… Somewhere between Rosemary’s Baby, X-Files and The Blair Witch Project (which the series manages not to caricature thanks to a parsimonious use of the videotape), Archive 81 relies on a solid catalog of references, but develops singular ideas, both in the staging and in the narration. Do you dare to press the button play ?
Archive 81, on Netflix
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Go for Fosso
The first monographic exhibition dedicated to Samuel Fosso, the retrospective organized at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie brings together some 300 photographs of this artist born in Cameroon in 1962. On three levels, fifty years of work unfold before our eyes. From his first black and white essays, made at the age of 13 in his small studio in Bangui, in the Central African Republic, to today, the photographer gives himself to be seen at all ages. Because the self-portrait is the basis of his work. He, whom his mother never took a picture of, has since caught up well. We discover him as a child, sometimes serious, sometimes laughing, but quickly overtaken by the dramas of the continent, then an adult hiding behind a colorful palette and playful staging a tragic vision of history. Putting on in turn a thousand costumes to question the game of representations, he slips in, here and there, touching autobiographical elements. Like this series, Memory of a friend, where he evokes the last hours of a childhood friend, named Tala, assassinated in 1997 by a Central African militia, 17 years before his own photo studio was looted.
Samuel Fosso. European House of Photography, 5/7, rue de Fourcy, Paris 4e. Until March 13, 2022, every day except Monday and Tuesday.
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On the sand and on the stage with Lawrence of Arabia
This season, theatrical biopics are all the rage. Latest? An astonishing show looks back on the life of Lawrence of Arabia. The adventures of this British spy who organized, during the First World War, the uprising of the armies of Prince Faisal once morest the Ottoman troops, allied with Germany, had given rise to a masterful film, signed David Lean, in 1962. Six decades later, Éric Bouvron and Benjamin Penamaria take the risk of offering a version for the stage. The bet was risky. The result is great. For two hours, the public is transported to the middle of the desert and relive the main episodes of the bloody conflict which contributed to redrawing the borders of the Middle East. From the souks of Cairo to the fortress of Aqaba, spectators discover the backstage of a founding event in the history of the XXe century, in a way that is as didactic as it is entertaining. Hats off!lawrence of arabia. To see at 13e Art, Place d’Italie, Paris 13e. From Thursday to Sunday, at 9 p.m., until February 27.
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Dancing on Lautréamont in an electro way
Attention, musical nugget! A little more than three years following its abundant Crave, a rich and abundant first opus, Léonie Pernet, who in the meantime set the series to music H24 broadcast on Arte, returns with an even more melodic and powerful album. Multi-instrumentalist and producer, the singer simply lets go of the English language behind which she protected herself like under a mask to offer us eleven jewels in French. Eleven tangy electro-pop songs, from “Mon amour tu bois trop” to “Cirque de consolation”, Léonie Pernet plays with her voice and handles her synthesizers with finesse as well as the drums and percussion. “Will you hear me this time rocking our illusions in the glow / Will you be among me in the circus of consolation? she sings. His words slip and bounce on his music, as in his electro hit “Les Chants de Maldoror”, the name of the collection of poems by the Comte de Lautréamont. A title on the precise, surgical bass, from which arise gnawa percussions inviting to dance. This is where all the richness of Léonie Pernet’s compositions lies: interbreeding.
The Circus of Consolation, published by CryBaby-InFiné. In concert on February 18 in Lille, February 26 in Metz, March 9 in Guyancourt, March 13 in Marseille, March 25 at the Trianon in Paris.
