Latest news with #FrenchNewWave
Time of India
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
A Weekend with French Cinema
Over two days, May 23 and 24, Alliance Française de Pune , in collaboration with the National Film Archive of India (NFAI), hosted a compact yet engaging French film festival at the NFAI auditorium. The theme of the festival was a homage to the ongoing Cannes Film Festival and featured three critically acclaimed films, Nous by Alice Diop , The Super 8 Years by Annie Ernaux , and Cléo from 5 to 7 by Agnès Varda , along with a panel discussion titled Nouvelle Vague: Legacies and Afterlives, which explored the continuing impact of the French New Wave on global cinema. It is impressive that despite being a limited festival with a niched down theme, it drew a modest but focussed audience, with film students, cinema enthusiasts, and followers of world cinema attending across both days. French New Wave in India 24 th May, Saturday, was arguably more important day among the two, as it not only witnessed screenings of two films, but also the panel discussion that featured Prof. Indranil Bhattacharya, Prof. Vaibhav Abnave, and visiting faculty Abhijeet Ranadive. The trio started the discussion with a simple yet brief overview into the history of French cinema and the emergence of the New Wave in the post-World War II era. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 中年以降であれば、このゲームは必須です。 BuzzDaily Winners ゲームをプレイ Undo Abnave started the conversation with a brief history into the French cinema and the New Wave came into existence in post-World War era. 'The Cannes Film Festival is linked with the spirit of aesthetics and politics being inseparable from each other.' Ranadive followed up on Abnave's opening by adding that 'it was the need for cinematic revolution in France that spearheaded the French New Wave in France, and later in rest of the world.' He said, 'There was a sense that France was making quality cinema, that was admired throughout the world. Yet there were people felt that there is something wrong with what world cinema was at that time. The people who have grown up after second World War, are more accustomed to the b-grade/gangster style American cinema.' The panellists explored how filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Agnès Varda sought to break the rules of traditional storytelling — often using handheld cameras, jump cuts, voiceover narrations, and non-linear structures — and how these techniques found resonance in global and even Indian cinema. Understanding French cinema French cinema, at its core, has often been about pushing boundaries — emotionally, politically, and formally. Whether it is through personal documentaries like Diop's Nous, literary memoirs like Ernaux's The Super 8 Years, or quietly radical works like Varda's Cléo from 5 to 7, French films tend to prioritise character, atmosphere, and social context over spectacle. They are less concerned with resolution and more with exploration — of people, memory, and meaning. As we were talking to the attendees, one of the student-attendees from FTII, who wants to remain anonymous, mentioned that 'he has always looked up to French, German, Italian, Japanese and other major film industries from around the world.' 'We are often reading about them, watching films that left a mark on the world, but it's rare to experience them in a theatre setting, especially with such context and curation,' he added. He also mentioned that 'much like France, India also needs a revolution that will give priority to the art rather than its ability to make money.' The festival, while small in scale, managed to spark big conversations — not just about French cinema, but about the place of meaningful, independent storytelling in today's world. For Pune's community of cinephiles and aspiring filmmakers, it served as a reminder that cinema, at its most powerful, doesn't always need grandeur — it needs honesty, intent, and the courage to challenge form. And that, perhaps, is the enduring legacy of French cinema — a legacy that continues to inspire from Cannes to classrooms.
Local France
30-05-2025
- Local France
Explained: France's new smoking ban rules
France might have an international reputation as the 'chimney of Europe' but it has in fact had a ban on smoking in indoor public spaces since 2007. In truth, France isn't quite as smoky as its image suggests - although it does still have a higher proportion of regular smokers than the EU average. Much of the image of the French as a nation of cigarette lovers comes from the films of the French New Wave and pop culture icons like Serge Gainsbourg, who was rarely pictured without a cigarette in hand. MAP Where in France do people smoke the most In the years since the 2007 smoking ban the French government has enacted a series of measures aimed at persuading people to quit including steep hikes on the taxes charges on tobacco. However from July 1st 2025 a new law will extend the smoking ban to include some out door spaces. Here's what changes; Indoor spaces Smoking in indoor public spaces and workplaces has been illegal in France since 2007. This covers offices, shops, other workplaces, leisure spaces such as cinemas and hospitality spaces such as the indoor areas of bars, cafés and restaurants. Public transport is also a no-smoking zone. Advertisement The ban also covers some private spaces - specifically it is illegal to smoke in a car if there are children under the age of 12 inside. Private homes or other private spaces are exempt from the ban. This includes rented properties - it is very unusual for landlords to try and ban tenants from smoking (although check your contract to be sure). When it comes to tourist rentals, however, it's increasingly common to have a no-smoking policy. Outdoor spaces The July 1st change extends the ban to include some outdoor areas as well. Smoking will be banned in all spaces where children could be present, including "beaches, parks, public gardens, outside of schools, bus stops and sports venues", said the minister Catherine Vautrin. In truth, many local authorities have already enacted similar bans under the power given to them by local bylaws, but from July 1st this will be standardised across the country. What about café terraces? Café terraces occupy an in-between status when it comes to the indoor or outdoor areas - at present, smoking is allowed on terraces, and the minister has specified that they will also be excluded from the new outdoor smoking ban, despite them being a place where children could be. The terrace has been something of a smoking battleground ever since the 2007 smoking ban came in, especially in winter. In response to the ban in 2007 many café owners created sheltered or covered 'terrace' spaces so that their customers could continue to smoke without having to go outside in the winter. Although these spaces remain technically a terrace, in winter you will often see places with three walls and a roof that look remarkably like an indoor space to the uninitiated. Technically, these remain legal so long as the walls are temporary and can be removed once the good weather arrives. Advertisement Café owners have vigorously resisted any expansion of anti-smoking laws, saying it will cripple their business, and it seems that the government has listened to them. From July 1st, therefore, the smoking rules in bars, cafés and restaurants will remain the same as they are now - not allowed inside but allowed on the terrace, even if the terrace has walls and a roof. There is no particular rule around smoking in areas where food is served - if you want to be sure of a smoke-free environment, you will need to go inside. If the windows are open and the smoke from smokers outside on the terrace drifts in, then unfortunately that's just bad luck. On film One thing that often surprises visitors from the US is seeing characters in French films and TV series lighting up. There is no restriction in France on characters smoking on film, and no plans to change this. Advertisement Enforcement The new outdoor smoking ban carries the same penalty as the indoor ban - a €135 fine for lighting up in a prohibited area - but any law is only as good as its enforcement. At present the law around indoor smoking is fairly well established and, on the whole, quite well enforced. The bits that are less well enforced are those areas that could be seen as a grey area - for example, smoking in public transport hubs is not permitted, but it's very common to see people lighting up on the platform in train stations, so these could be argued to be an outdoor space. Likewise although it would be unusual to see someone lighting up in a fully indoor area such as a swimming pool, it's common and broadly tolerated for people to smoke in sports stadiums which are open to the air. Enforcement of local bylaws banning smoking in areas such as beaches has so far depended on the area and whether the local authority has the resources to police such a ban. Local laws Local authorities maintain their powers to expand a smoking ban to public spaces not mentioned in the new law if they wish to. In the summer smoking is often banned in national forests, because of the risk of wildfires - keep an eye out for signs announcing a smoking ban in a certain area. What about vaping? Somewhat confusingly, vapes or electronic cigarettes are partially covered by the old law but are not covered in the law's outdoor ban. It will therefore remain legal to vape outdoors in places such as beaches or outside schools, even after the introduction of the new law. Advertisement When it comes to indoor use, vapes have a 'half and half' status - it is prohibited on enclosed forms of public transportation, and in enclosed workspaces intended for collective use. Restaurants, cafés, shopping centres and nightclubs can legally allow vaping, although the owners can also introduce private rules prohibiting vaping. In general the rules are not well enforced, in part because of confusion around what the law actually says. In 2023 the then-prime minister Elisabeth Borne sparked a controversy over her habit of vaping in the French parliament (her workplace).
The Guardian
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Darling review – Julie Christie's romantic satire of swinging 60s has a terrific punch
Some of it feels a bit dated now, and that brittle, sophisticated chatter in the cocktail party scenes has a fingernails-down-the-blackboard screechiness that can't have been intended at the time. But John Schlesinger's winsome adventure from 1965 still has verve and ambition, a romantic satire of swinging London now on rerelease for its 60th anniversary. Julie Christie plays Diana Scott, a model and actor who enjoys an insouciantly upward rake's progress in smart-set London: an innocent, almost childlike Becky Sharp-type character, for all her dissolute encounters, and abortion and divorce are notably presented without sorrowing dismay and disapproval. The wry, Oscar-winning screenplay from Frederic Raphael imports and anglicises the influence of Godard, Resnais, Varda and the French New Wave; fashion models and advertising are vitally important; there is a media interview with a writer (English author and don Hugo Dyson has a cameo as a supposed author of provincial decency and integrity); and we get the occasional gloomy brooding about the bomb. Interestingly, however, the scenes set in Paris where Diana witnesses a live sex show, are a rather saucer-eyed English view of the naughty French, and would never pass muster in an actual French film. Having said which, Schlesinger manages freeze-frame images quite as well as the continentals. Christie's ingenue is a girl from a good English family, who got married too young to a decent but boring chap. Soon she is caught between two lovers played by two acting thoroughbreds whose faces have an amazing and sometimes near-gargoyle expression of worldliness: Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey. Bogarde is Robert Gold, who fronts an earnest TV show about culture called Art and You. We see him conducting interviews in the street about what passersby think is most shaming in modern British society. Schlesinger gives us what looks like hilarious, genuine voxpop footage in which people declare that Britain's most shaming things are, variously, traffic problems and the prevalence of homosexuality. One of Robert's interviewees is Diana who soon finds herself in an extramarital entanglement with him. When they go to a hotel room, Robert has to pretend they are a married couple by buying a suitcase and making it feel respectably heavy for the bellboy by covertly filling it with copies of the old London Evening News – the headline of which is an irresistible madeleine for non-swinging Britain: MINERS – ALL HOPE VANISHES. Without any great agonising, Robert leaves his homely wife and children to move in with Diana in her swinging London flat (she is thrilled by the 'gorgeous negroes' upstairs, a very 1965 script moment) and Robert introduces her to an elegant new stratum of society where she meets oleaginous smoothie Miles Brand, an adman played by Harvey; he gets her on his books and his German clients love Diana's 'Aryan' look. Diana also befriends a gay fashion photographer Malcolm (played by actor turned author Roland Curram) who accompanies her on holiday. The film is full of incidental detail that will grip all fans of bygone Britain. Uptight Robert drives an Austin 1100 (like the one beloved of Basil Fawlty) whereas Miles drives a groovy Volvo sports car – the kind that Roger Moore had playing Simon Templar in The Saint. But the parade of ironies continues. Miles gets Diana promotional work at a grotesque charity event where people donate to famine relief while gorging themselves on food and wine, and even secures her a walk-on role in a sub-Hammer movie. She also plays the role of a Renaissance principessa in a silly TV ad for chocolate, filmed at the palazzo of a suave and recently widowed Italian nobleman who is entranced by Diana – and she reaches the Grace Kelly moment in her career. Christie is always in danger of being upstaged by Bogarde and Harvey, pouting male divas both, and her performance is in fact a model of restraint and self-effacement compared with these preening exquisites. Bogarde shows us a flash of something spiteful and even sinister in the way he treats Diana at the very end, and also in his spasm of jealous rage when he realises she has been cheating on him, dragging her down an escalator in the London underground and bellowing the word 'whore' in that refined voice. The bland, amiable, noncommittal Diana certainly doesn't deserve that label. It's directed with terrific punch with Schlesinger, who – as in Midnight Cowboy and Far from the Madding Crowd – has a flair for showing us innocents who wish to survive. Darling is in UK cinemas from 30 May and on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from 16 June
Digital Trends
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
Nouvelle Vague, one of the big hits of Cannes, just sold to Netflix
The Cannes Film Festival and Netflix have not always had a smooth relationship, but Richard Linklater's latest film is headed to the streamer following its Cannes premiere. Nouvelle Vague, which is largely in French, chronicles the making of Jean-Luc Godard's film Breathless, one of the most important films ever made and a hallmark of the French New Wave. It's an ironic twist for a movie about a foundational moment in the history of cinema, in part because we don't know whether the film will get a theatrical release other than the mandatory two-week window required for awards consideration. 'It means so much for us to be here tonight. Over a year ago we were filming right here,' Linklater said at the premiere, per Variety. 'And we all said: 'Wouldn't it be amazing if we could end up here showing our movie. It would be crazy to be here.' And here we are! Cinema is magic. It meant so much to us to try and recreate the time and place. It means so much in film history, and it meant so much to each cast member, every crew member. Everybody worked so hard to try and get it right and recreate this moment. And thank you for this moment.' Netflix has never shied away from acquiring titles from big directors, even if it means that those movies don't necessarily get the theatrical releases their directors might want. Nouvelle Vague will hit Netflix this year, but whether it arrives in theaters for any extended amount of time remains unclear.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Nouvelle Vague' Review: Richard Linklater's French New Wave Cosplay Is More ‘Midnight in Paris' Than Histoire du Cinema
From Jean Seberg's sideswept pixie cut to Jean-Paul Belmondo's aviators, Jean-Luc Godard's 'Breathless' has become more fashionable in today's cultural imagination for its iconic looks and images than for how the jump-cut-pioneering renegade feature collapsed cinematic hierarchies as we knew them in 1960. That makes one of the greatest films of all time, and the standard bearer of the French New Wave, ripe for discovery for a younger generation — and fresher still for the older ones well familiar with it. If the best way to criticize a movie, as Cahiers du Cinéma critic Godard once said, is to make one, then director Richard Linklater's answer to making a tribute to 'Breathless' might instead be to not quite criticize but certainly to subvert the tropes of movies about moviemaking. His black-and-white 'Nouvelle Vague,' itself a meticulous recreation of a movie made in 1959 with all the celluloid, Academy-ratio crackle and pop, is more New Wave hangout movie than cinema history, with the parade of faces and names inspiring knowing chuckles in the cinephile audience. More from IndieWire 'Imago' Review: Chechen Documentary Explores a Filmmaker's Conflicted Return to His Roots 'Zootopia 2' Trailer: The Disney Sequel Introduces Reptiles with Ke Huy Quan's Mysterious Snake Beyond Godard, appearances from Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Robert Bresson, Agnès Varda, and more figureheads — all played by lesser-known actors with varying likeness to their real-life counterparts — make for a veritable who's-who soufflé more akin to Woody Allen's 'Midnight in Paris' fin-de-siècle cosplay, where run-and-gun appearances by literary and artistic idols like Salvador Dalí, Gertrude Stein, Alice Toklas, Man Ray, Luis Buñuel, and Djuna Barnes provided little more than window-dressing to a Belle Époque time travel exercise. 'Nouvelle Vague' is deeper than that, though a lot of these namedrops exist without context beyond 'look, here they are.' It's greatly amusing to play a kind of 'I Spy' game in 'Nouvelle Vague' as to who's who in the ensemble — though the filmmakers take the guessing out with name cards that introduce each character as if in a Wes Anderson or, perhaps, a Godard movie that inspired someone like Anderson. But 'Nouvelle Vague,' perhaps by design, fails to make the case that 'Breathless' was a groundbreaking endeavor at all. That's perhaps because the on-the-ground, glue-and-paper-clips late-1950s crew at the time (besides maybe except Godard himself) didn't know what they had their hands on or what shape it would take. Godard's revolutionary crime drama about a guy, a girl, and a gun comes off more like a pet project or even a student film here, part of both the charms and frustrations of 'Nouvelle Vague.' Perpetually in dark sunglasses, newcomer Guillaume Marbeck plays Godard as little more than a caricature of the man who lagged behind his Cahiers du Cinéma peers (Rivette and Éric Rohmer among them) in terms of taking his cinephilia beyond the storied magazine and in front of a movie camera. But Marbeck cuts a rueful silhouette, a cigarette ever burnt to its nub in his hands, that could easily inspire some Instagram-friendly looks if 'Nouvelle Vague' finds the right audience (and I think a young one is ultimately what Linklater is after, here). Well-cast is Zoey Deutch as 'Breathless' breakout Jean Seberg in her nascent prime, who made the film two decades before she succumbed to mental illness and likely killed herself after becoming an FBI target for her political views (though her death remains the subject of mystery and speculation, in places like the podcast 'You Must Remember This,' which offers an addictive season paralleling the careers of Seberg and Jane Fonda as Hollywood political outcasts). There's little foreshadowing of the Seberg that would be, though when she's not twirling in fountains in an A-line dress here, Deutch wryly plays Seberg as a kind of mischievous backstage drama queen, complaining about the amateur production and its lack of sync sound to her disaffected husband, the filmmaker François Moreuil (Paolo Luka-Noé) — her first of a few toxic husbands. Seberg was mostly fluent in French, though Deutch (who maybe isn't) warmly captures the actress' charmingly terrible American accent — and even nails the intonation of 'New York Herald Tribune!' There's also reference to her fraught collaboration with Otto Preminger — he burned her at the stake quite literally for 'Saint Joan' (1957) and challenged her on the set of her coming-of-age breakout 'Bonjour Tristesse' (1958), the movie that inspired Godard to cast her. Those experiences must have made dealing with someone like Godard, who wrote that day's script pages for 'Breathless' over breakfast across the two-week shoot, and regularly threw out said pages or balked at his collaborators who accused him of shirking eyeline and continuity conventions. One of this film's big laughs comes from Belmondo (Aubry Dullin) bloodied and running through the street for the 'Breathless' finale, reassuring Parisian passers-by that it's only a movie. Some of the callbacks to elements of 'Breathless' outside the recreated production wear thin, like the repeated use of 'dégolas,' in reference to one of the 1960 movie's great quotable lines, outside of context. There's a bit of tee-hee you-get-it-right? to its inclusion in an early scene between Godard and his producer, Georges de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyfürst). There's a buddy comedy element to Godard's at times tempestuous relationship with his producer that makes for some of this film's most trenchant inquiries into the filmmaking mindset. 'Paying audiences enjoy a formal narrative,' he cautions Godard as disasters on 'Breathless' pile up — a wink to how resistant audiences were toward experimentation in favor of easier, blandly reassuring stories that tell you how to feel, and when, and why. That hasn't changed, as we all know, as the indie film hemisphere continues to dangerously contract. Linklater has long been an independent filmmaker who's only courted the studio system (his recent Netflix premiere 'Hit Man' is easily his most commercial film to date, though there have been others) without ever being asked to conform ('Waking Life' or 'A Scanner Darkly,' anyone?). There's no question Linklater identifies with Godard and is, like any filmmaker of his caliber and contemporary, one continually inspired by the French director's iconoclasm and stylistic derring-do. That said, 'Nouvelle Vague' isn't trying to be a movie that matches Godard's style or temperament, but is closer to the more conventionally shaped narratives driven by some of Godard's less canonical peers and many imitators. Godard gets sage advice from Roberto Rossellini (Laurent Mothe) in the run-up to making 'Breathless'; I can't corroborate whether this encounter ever happened, but Linklater drops in similar run-ins (like with Bresson shooting 'Pickpocket' in a Paris subway tunnel) that serve more to tell the story of the French New Wave, to capture its zeitgeist and energy, than a coherent by-the-books retelling. Which would be a drag, anyway, even as fastidious recreations of 'Breathless' movie moments might tell a different story. These French New Wave filmmakers, after all, were just running around Paris with cameras. Still, none were quite so making-it-up-as-they-went-along as Godard. David Chambille's celluloid cinematography and a period jazz soundtrack immerse us in this world more than the features of 'Midnight in Paris' managed to, while Catherine Schwartz's editing moves us through the 'Breathless' production at a quick clip. But these elements may not, for a naive audience, successfully make the case for the brilliance of 'Breathless' and how its pulp and punch inform pretty much everything such a younger audience watches these days. Hopefully, 'Nouvelle Vague' encourages you to look back and watch 'Breathless' again — or for the first time — but Linklater's movie may inadvertently suggest, 'You could just watch this one instead.' 'Nouvelle Vague' premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution. Want to stay up to date on IndieWire's film and critical thoughts? to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers. Best of IndieWire The 25 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies, Ranked Every IndieWire TV Review from 2020, Ranked by Grade from Best to Worst
