3 posts tagged “french”

Another great story from Harlan Coban. Adapted for film in classic French style. Acting is very real; suspense perfect.

Francois Cluzet is superb.

Warning, a few plot spoilers and a great review. http://www.futuremovies.co.uk/review.asp?ID=705

Aren’t the French adorable. Style, intellect, approach. They have invaded England again, this time with success. They sent an adorable creature. She is reinvigorating our appreciation of pastry and everything sweet, in taste and style. This time it is with Macaroons.

Ladurée is here in London.

M. Hulot's Holiday [1953] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot is a film worthy to sit alongside the great silent films of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Directed and performed by Jacques Tati.

This is almost a speech-less film. There is chatter, music, the sounds of the sea and amusingly the hinges of the swinging doors to the dining room.

Mr. Hulot joins the rest of the French population on its annual summer retreat in August “la grande evasion”. Several groups of friends and families descend upon a coastal town. It’s a serious sort of place, quite stuffy and one would imagine the townsfolk prepares all year round for this period. That’s it that is the storyline. Friends and families go about their own way to enjoy their vacation.

It’s absolutely hilarious.

Tati satirizes the trivia and the pointless, the things people do on vacation. It really is without a plot and is made up of set pieces – a tennis match (unforgettable serve), an excursion and a funeral (car tyres transformed into a reef) and a card game (wind, music and power cuts). Mr. Hulot’s character is well liked, polite and gentile. Yet it is he who is the cause of most of the disturbances and disruptions to the proceedings.  He plays the clumsy fool superbly.