Open the green shutters
L’dark and disenchanted universe of Georges Simenon goes well with Gérard Depardieu, who, after having shown his carcass at Patrice Leconte in Maigretfinds himself facing the camera of Jean Becker in the adaptation of Green shutters signed Jean-Loup Dabadie – his latest screenplay. The story of an old actor who has only a few months to live and is abandoned by his mistress. But still ? Depardieu especially finds his beloved partner, that of The Woman Next Door, Fanny Ardant, and it’s a treat to see them play both complicit and unpredictable. In green shutters, it’s about acting, of course, but also about love on the run, broken promises, friendship (with the will-o’-the-wisp Benoît Poelvoorde), passing life, impossible dreams. Moving and fair.
Indoors.
READ ALSOFanny Ardant: “The lack of freedom that we are dying of”
Celebrate Sacred Music
The La Chaise-Dieu Music Festival celebrates – and to what hymns! – sa 56e editing. The beloved event of classical music fanatics (20,000 people flock to it each year) is taking place right now, and until August 28, in Haute-Loire. Inviting major French symphonic ensembles (the Académie de l’Opéra national de Paris, the Aedes ensemble, the Les Siècles orchestra, etc.) and international ones (the English choir Tenebrae, the Berliner Symphoniker, the National Orchestra of Belgium, etc.) , the festival resounds with sacred music in the abbey church of Saint-Robert, in La Chaise-Dieu. But also invites him to other places in the region, from the Italian-style theater in Le Puy-en-Velay to the Château de Chavaniac-Lafayette, via the abbey church of Saint-Austremoine in Issoire… Don’t miss the homage to the composer César Franck, born in Liège 200 years ago. Some of his famous pieces for organ will be played on August 25 on the Callinet d’Issoire instrument. His Prelude, Fugue and Variation, performed by the Pays de Savoie orchestra, will resound on August 27 at the Saint-Robert abbey. The Belgian pianist Florian Noack will offer a walk through his symphonic poems and his piano pieces during two major concerts, given on August 27 and 28, still at the Saint-Robert abbey. Divine times!
Until August 28, at La Chaise-Dieu. Price: from 8 to 90 euros. More information on www.chaise-dieu.com
READ ALSOSymphony of great classics for the 48th edition of the Festival de La Chaise-Dieu
Take off on the back of a dragon
A glass of violent deaths, a handful of orgies, a pinch of gore… House of the Dragonhighly anticipated fire spin-off Game of Thrones, launched with great fanfare on August 21 on HBO (OCS in France), has nothing to envy to its parent series. The scenario of these ten episodes, which take place 200 years earlier, does not take too many risks by simply establishing new characters in the familiar settings of Port-Réal over which the Targaryens reign. If any similarity with GOT is therefore not fortuitous, the mixture is no less tasty. When the series begins, war rages within the Targaryens themselves. Who the good King Viserys Iis (excellent Paddy Considine) will he appoint as successor, he who had no son? Rhaenyra, his daughter? The brutal Daemon, his brother? His heart is swaying and his advisers, led by the king’s hand, are all trying to advance their pawns, for more or less avowed reasons. The soap-fantasy knows how to bait us with skill. We eagerly await the sequel.
House of the Dragonon OCS City, on Monday nights
READ ALSO“House of the Dragon”: does the series live up to “Game of Thrones”?
Contemplate the sea while listening to Interpol
Born in New York in 1997, Interpol succeeded in making the Big Apple the capital of rock in the early 2000s, bringing in its wake guitar strings The Strokes, LCD Soundsystem, The National… Twenty years after the release of its first album, Turn on the Bright Lights, the ex-quartet, which became a trio (in leaving, its bassist Carlos Dengler described his experience with the group as a state of post-traumatic stress), unveiled on July 15 a seventh post-punk opus of dark energy produced by Flood and Alan Moulder (U2, New Order, Depeche Mode…). In his contemplative lyrics, singer Paul Banks, a former NYU literature student, explores the state of the world, its resilience, its flashes of hope. A disc that sticks to the skin like total screen.
Interpol – The Other Side of Make-Believe (Matador)
Enjoying our freedoms with Apuleius
READ ALSOManthia Diawara: “Édouard Glissant freed me”
The excellent magazine “of literature and reflection”, directed by Hubert Haddad, devotes its last issue (the seventh, wise, but fortunately mad, too) to a theme cruelly revived by the attempted murder of which Salman Rushdie has just been victim: freedom. It is combined here in the plural: defended by the poets and artists of the Kurdish resistance, with in particular these popular Kurdish songs proposed by Gérard Chaliand and a drawing by the young Zehra Dogan. Freedoms generated by the thought of Édouard Glissant, presented by Lise Gauvin, including in this era of resurgent nationalisms described by Sam Coombes. Freedoms of Algerian writers, from Kateb Yacine to Hamid Skif, from Malian Yambo Ouologuem, from Egyptian Albert Cossery. We breathe in the sea air carried by Quebec feathers, we rediscover the whimsical Noël Devaulx. So many stimulating and committed openings in this volume which rivals quality texts. By the way, why Apuleius ? Because: “I myself am most grateful to the donkey that I was for having made me go through various tribulations and made me, if not fully wise, at least richer in knowledge” (The Golden Ass or The Metamorphoses of Apuleius). Of which act, printed.
Apuleiusn° 7, “Liberties”, Zuma editions, €32
READ ALSOSalman Rushdie’s Fighting Lessons