Find Almodovar, between life and death
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We wondered what was going to be able to concoct Pedro Almodovar after his autobiographical and quasi-testamentary Pain and Glory (2019) … and now, like a phoenix rising from its ashes, the filmmaker overcomes his spleen by taking this little gem out of the drawer, Parallel Mothers, drafted years ago. He tells the story of two women, Janis (Penélope Cruz) and Ana (formidable Milena Smit), whose destinies intersect in a maternity hospital in Madrid when giving birth to their respective daughters. The two are single, got pregnant by accident – Janis late, Ana a little too early – and will find themselves bound by an astonishing secret. Of these two women well anchored in our time, Almodovar will make the explorers of a territory at the forefront of parenthood.
In parallel to the crossed destinies of his heroines and the descendants who turn their lives upside down, he tells the story of the traumatic ancestry, the poorly healed wounds and the ghosts of the civil war of the 1930s. Where are the great-grandfathers buried children of Janis and Ana, those who fought in the Civil War alongside the Republicans and who were killed by the Francoists? Pedro Almodovar once again plays a virtuoso with our emotions in this psychological drama with false comedy airs. Through the portrait of imperfect mothers – Penélope Cruz, Milena Smit and Aitana Sanchez-Gijon – he once again questions filiation, transmission, identity. And gives the most intimate pains the echo of the collective drama. From the great Pedro!
In theaters on 1is December
READ ALSOCinema – Penélope Cruz as a high mother
Fly to the Japanese island of Ariane Mnouchkine
Ohas always the same pleasure to return to the Théâtre du Soleil, nestled in the heart of the Bois de Vincennes, on the site of the Cartoucherie, in Paris. From the top of her 82 years, disheveled hair, the director Ariane Mnouchkine stands immutably at the entrance to welcome the spectators. From the hall, you enter a “Japanese” universe: chôchins (lanterns) hanging from the ceiling, flaming dragons… On the vast Sun stage, Cornelia, a director who had already been seen in the troupe’s previous room, A Room in India, is ill, bedridden. She dreams of a fishing island in Japan, where an international theater festival is to be inaugurated. The shenanigans of the political authorities, attracted by the money of real estate developers who want to build a hotel casino on the island, will disrupt the festivities. This argument, alas, too short – the text lacking a little dramatic springs – nevertheless offers the actors of Mnouchkine the freedom to deploy all their art according to mise en abyme and games of mirrors. As usual, they set up each element of the decor, moving from one role to another, singing and handling puppets, playing masks, noh and kabuki theater.
The evils of the contemporary world, the pandemic and isolation, addiction to new technologies or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are evoked in the background, without heaviness. Hélène Cinque brilliantly plays the heroine Cornélia, a sort of double of Ariane Mnouchkine, to the bewitching tunes of the composer Jean-Jacques Lemêtre. The staging and scenography are breathtaking. A long fresco installed at the back of the stage and the movable bricks of the decoration transport us from one painting to another: the jetty of a port, the calm of a Japanese bath, the yacht of a Brazilian billionaire, the eruption of a volcano, the storm which blows on the island and, extraordinary finale, the arrival of giant storks in the middle of dancers with fans. Throughout this theatrical dream, the spectators take full view. The magic of the Sun still dazzles. Hats off, and thank you Madame Mnouchkine!READ ALSOWhen political correctness gags the theater
L’île d’or, until the end of February 2022 at the Théâtre du Soleil, in Paris. Metro Château de Vincennes then free shuttle. Japanese dinner on site.
Climb Icelandic volcanoes with Damon Albarn
This is Damon Albarn’s most intimate album. The prolific leader of Gorillaz and the band Blur has left the hubbub of the pop and rock scene to put his bags and melodies in the heart of Iceland, where he owns a home. There, he gathered some musician friends and composed several songs while watching the blue of the Icelandic glaciers which recede from year to year under the effect of global warming. “I like to make more personal records, but I do it when I have nothing else on the way, they are like a luxury”, confesses the musician. The result, The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows, his second solo album seven years after the very pop Everyday Robots, seized by its cold beauty. Like the title “Combustion”, an electric tumult from which suddenly emerge the crystalline notes of a piano, a magnificent introduction to the atmospheric ballad “Daft Wader”. Throughout the songs, Damon Albarn takes us in a soaring ode in the tradition of Nick Cave. He tells us sweet poems: “You have gone, The dark journey that leaves no returning, It’s fruitless for me to mourn you, But who can help mourning, To think of life that did laugh on your face, In the beautiful past Left so desolate now ”. A hymn to solitude and contemplation perfect for spending the winter.
« The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows » (Transgressive Records). Damon Albarn sera en concert les 4 et 5 mars à the Philharmonie de Paris, then with Gorillaz at the We Love Green Festival, June 2, 2022.
READ ALSODamon Albarn: “Do I think I am handsome? Yes, clearly “
Stroll with the family at the Montreuil Children’s Book Fair
It is the unmissable event for the youngest and their parents: the Montreuil children’s book fair Every year, since 1984, brings together young and old for an event dedicated to children’s literature. Installed in the Paris-Est Montreuil space, the event brings together 400 exhibitors, from small publishers to very large, including of course press titles intended for children and young people. From this Wednesday 1is December, visitors aged 0 to 100 (and over!) will be able to attend literary meetings and signings, participate in cultural awareness or illustration workshops … For calm children, appropriate reading time at different ages are offered every day between 9:30 am and 5:30 pm For the more energetic, a play area for discovering literature while having fun is also available. Lectures, readings and dedications will also allow young audiences to discover or meet the some 250 authors present at the Show, including some of our great favorites, such as Susie Morgenstern, Clémentine Beauvais, Rebecca Dautremer or Timothée de Fombelle …
At the Paris-Est Montreuil space, 128, rue de Paris-Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis), from 1is to December 6.
Get news from Haiti
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“Haiti, what future? The courageous question will be raised by the guests of the 8e Haitian Book Fair held at the town hall of 15e arrondissement of Paris, and welcomes many of its talented writers: Louis-Philippe Dalembert for his formidable Milwaukee Blues, finalist of Goncourt this year, Jean d’Amérique, poet, playwright and multi-award-winning novelist whose first novel must be read Sewing sun (Actes Sud) to enter the fate of a young girl from her country, or Emmelie Prophète who will just arrive there, with her novel The Villages of God, where the young Celia lives in the middle of the gangs of Port-au-Prince, these gangs which today make the law in the city in defiance of everything. But Haiti is also a story: that of slavery that historian Marcel Dorigny, who died prematurely this fall, told, and to which homage will be paid, that of literature with the figures of Jean-Claude Charles, of which Inkwell memory re-publishes the great novels, and that of Jacques Stephen Alexis which will be celebrated throughout “his” year, 2022, centenary of the birth of the author of Space of a blink. Do not miss the cultural evening on Saturday where the poet James Noël will give a performance in his own way “Aiee! Ayiti, a beast stings me! “. As we say in Creole, Haiti Hold on! Haiti stand up!
READ ALSOHaiti under the gaze of its writers
Haitian Book Fair December 4 and 5, Mairie du 15e from Paris.
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