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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Dimply Mélanie Doutey has won French film-goers' hearts.
Are you ready for a swashbuckling French costume comedy? Here it is: Il ne Faut Jurer de Rien, starring Gérard Jugnot, star of last year’s surprise box-office smash Les Choristes, and Mélanie Doutey, the new French screen sweetheart, who made her name in one of France’s few (only?) successful TV sitcoms, “Clara Sheller,” in which the pretty, perky actress played the roommate of a gay man. It wasn’t “Will and Grace,” but it wasn’t bad for French TV.
Back to the film: Directed by Eric Civanyan and set in 1930, it is based on French poet Alfred de Musset’s play of the same name and tells the story of a rich, shop-proud merchant who wants to marry his dissolute nephew (Jean Dujardin) off to the daughter of an impoverished aristocrat.
Neither the daughter or the nephew want any part of this plan, but for a little fun, the cynical Don Juan of a nephew gets his uncle to agree that if he can bed the headstrong young lady before midnight, he won’t have to marry her.
This leads to all sorts of fun and games as the nephew chases the daughter around and – surprise – gets her to fall in love with him. Throw in lavish costumes, lovely scenery, some gratuitous violence, lots of debauchery with naked prostitutes in a bordello, a few exciting horse-and-carriage chases, and plenty of anachronistic dialogue and feminist attitude, and you have 100 minutes of colorful overactivity and overacting that
Alfred de Musset would probably have difficulty recognizing as his work.
Why are so many French directors lately trying to compete with popular American films by overdoing the action to the point of hysteria, rather than sticking to what they do best?
In the future, expect to be see a lot more of the dimply Mélanie Doutey, who has the same sort of appeal as Audrey Tautou and even looks quite a lot like her.
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