Even art-loving dogs had to wrap up during the recent cold snap in Paris. Photo: Eric Tenin of Paris Daily Photo.
Wednesday, 15 February 2012 11:13
Paris Update Fashion Flash
FRENCH MICHAEL MOORE TAKES ON NATIONAL FOOD INDUSTRY
The motto of Le République de la Malbouffe: "Opacity, Obesity, Precarity."
Xavier Denamur, the owner of five small restaurants in Paris, is a man on a crusade. It began with the 2009 decrease in value-added tax from 21.6 percent to 5.5 percent on restaurant meals, which he says favored big chain restaurants without helping the small independents as promised. Going beyond that issue, he blames French government policies and a lack of transparency in the food industry for the increasing industrialization of food preparation and delivery, the degradation of food quality in France, and increasing obesity and public health costs. One of his campaigns calls for legislation that would create a label informing restaurant customers whether the food is prepared from fresh ingredients on-site or is factory-made or frozen.
Denamur has formed an association called La République de la Malbouffe (The Republic of Bad Food) and has just released a documentary film of the same name, directed by Jacques Goldstein. Unfortunately, the film lacks focus and does not get his laudable message across clearly. Shown only in a handful of Paris cinemas, it is also available on DVD (with issue no. 17 of Rue89 magazine, for €5). Denamur continues to hold debates and chase politicians, hoping to get them to listen to his call for transparency. “My goal is to get citizens interested in politics again,” he says, by encouraging them to vote and write to their representatives. Heidi Ellison
Tuesday, 14 February 2012 23:00
Paris Update Art Notes
ANDREAS SLOMINSKI
Recent works by Andreas Slominski at the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris (through February 29). Video by Nikolaï Saoulski. Click here for larger screen.
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At last: a French romantic comedy that has believable characters and is smart, funny and well-acted.
Les Ambitieux, directed by Catherine Corsini, stars Karin Viard in a near-perfect portrayal of a tough (but attractive, of course) book editor for a major French publisher. Judith is a man-eater who uses men for sex and dumps them as soon as they start showing signs of attachment. Things change, however, when she meets Julien (Eric Caravaca), an aspiring novelist from the provinces whose book she has rejected without ever having read it.
The depiction of the Parisian publishing world is spot on and hilarious: when Judith, who has treated Julien like a speck of dirt until she needs a favor from him, critiques his novel and advises him on how to write, you’d swear she had read his manuscript with great attention.
Julien sells his bookstore in a small town, leaves his girlfriend and moves to Paris to carry on an affair with Judith and write his second novel, and therein lies the plot. His new novel is based on the adventurous life of Judith’s father, whose papers are delivered to her in a metal box at the beginning of the film. Judith wants nothing to do with the memory of the father who rejected her, and Julien doesn’t bother to tell her that he has stolen her father’s life story for his own purposes.
The plot really doesn’t make an awful lot of sense, and the ending is confusing and disappointingly clichéd, but getting there in the company of these characters has been so enjoyable that you don’t really care.
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