Product Information & Customer Reviews
Description
Enjoy our best recommendations for French-language movies and join our ciné-salon to discuss them in French—to the best of your ability—led by our instructor Emeline Ulliman! Connect with others through our shared love of cinema and Francophone cultures. This is a great way to practice your French but is first meant to entertain you and help us all socialize.
All levels are welcome. Discussion questions will be provided for each event.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
For the Ciné-Salon Online:
- Each session, we have chosen a film for you to view at home. Our selections are usually available via various streaming.
- Every participant watches the film before the discussion at a time that fits their own schedule.
- Participants must RSVP to the event in order to receive the Zoom meeting link in a confirmation email.
- At the time of the event, participants join the online Zoom meeting.
- A list of questions will be made available as a proposed structure for the discussion.
- Have fun discussing the films with other participants in a relaxed atmosphere! Each event will last about 90min.
Dates:
11-Sep
Film/Director/Available – Jeanne du Barry (2023) Maïwen [Kanopy, Amazon Prime]
Description – Maïwenn’s “Jeanne du Barry” follows the life of King Louis XV’s infamous mistress. The 2023 film, which premiered at Cannes last week, received a
seven-minute standing ovation. Maïwenn directs the historical drama and stars as its titular character, while Johnny Depp portrays the French
ruler.
Du Barry scandalized the court at Versailles upon her arrival in 1768. After French palace. Du Barry was scorned by her noble contemporaries,
including the future Queen of France, Marie Antoinette.
25-Sep
Film/Director/Available – Une belle course (Driving
Madeline) (2022) Christian
Carion [Amazon Prime]
Description – Charles (Dany Boon) is offered a ‘plum fare’ by the dispatcher. Charles is middle-aged and in debt, which makes him even grumpier than the
average Paris cabbie. He crosses the city to a house in a leafy suburb where no-one answers. He blasts the horn, and Madeleine (Line Renaud) calls
from the other side of the road, telling him she’s not deaf. She looks sadly at the shuttered house, suggesting that this may have been her family
home – a long time ago.
Line Renaud is a much-loved French singer and actor whose life spans most of the last century. Casting her in a leading role at 93 must have posed
some challenges, but Driving Madeleine is constructed to fit around her, rather than the other way around. She sits in the back of a taxi for most of
it, with Dany Boon – himself a big star – driving her around Paris. Both lives are changed. Less obviously, this is an encounter between old Paris and
new Paris, and the way women’s lives have changed.
9-Oct
Film/Director/Available – Incendies (Fires ) (2010) Denis
Villeneuve [Amazon Prime]
Description – After the death of their mother, twins in Montreal are called to the office of her employer. She had gone to work for him some 20 years ago after
escaping sectarian violence and rage in a nation not unlike Lebanon. She left for her children, they learn, two letters. Jeanne (Melissa DesormeauxPoulin) is asked to give hers to the father they never knew. Simon (Maxim Gaudette) is told to give his to a brother they didn’t know they had.
This is a plot for a thriller, really, and Denis Villeneuve’s Oscar-nominated “Incendies” doesn’t shy away from that truth. But it wants to be much
more than a thriller and succeeds in demonstrating how senseless and futile it is to hate others because of their religion.
23-Oct
Film/Director/Available – Illusions perdues (Lost Illusions)
(2021) Xavier Giannoli [Hoopla,
Amazon Prime]
Description – Based on the classic novel by Honoré de Balzac. “Even today in Paris, people wonder how his story could have happened, what movement of the
world swept him away.” Said in voiceover within the first five minutes of “Lost Illusions,” these words point the way towards the end. Those who
read Honoré de Balzac’s novel, originally serialized in the late 1830s and early 1840s, already know the roadmap from hopeful innocence to lost
illusions. To those who haven’t read it, the voiceover clues them in instantly. This is a cautionary tale about selling out your gifts to the highest
bidder, about how naïveté doesn’t stand a chance against the kind of corruption on display in Paris in the 1820s. Lucien’s life is described early on
as “a tragedy,” and so even in all the scenes of triumph that follow, impending disaster is always present.
6-Nov
Film/Director/Available – Coup de chance ( Stroke of Luck)
(2023) Woody Allen [Amazon
Prime]
Description – Fanny (Lou de Laâge), we’re told, was once a high-school bohemian. Now she’s wed to the odious Jean (Melvil Poupaud), a self-made millionaire
whose chief passion is the train-set which occupies an entire room of their palatial home. She spends her time in posh auction rooms, attending
cocktail receptions or hunting deer from the couple’s bucolic weekend retreat. Now, thanks to her dalliance with Alain (Niels Schneider), Fanny
reconnects with a different (and woozily romanticised) side of Paris and starts browsing in second-hand bookshops and strolling through leafblown city parks. “My life would be so different if I hadn’t bumped into you on the street,” she declares. Inevitably, though, luck is not on their
side. Boiling over with suspicion, Jean has already hired a private detective to trail his wife around town and it is at this point that the melancholic
Coup de Chance prepares to jump the points and embark on a different, rather darker track.
Pricing:
This course can be purchased as a block ($50) or by event ($10/ea)
Additional information
REGISTER | 1 class, 2 classes, 3 classes, 4 classes, 5 classes |
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