It was a dazzling week in which Desperately Seeking Paris found bits of beauty everywhere —be it on the town, in the ‘hood or at home.
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When Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia opened the doors of New York City Center in 1943, he was fulfilling a promise to New Yorkers that they could see world-class performances at affordable prices. It was all part of a plan to make New York the center of innovation in the worlds of dance, music, and theater. It was a promise made, a promise kept.
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The Ferryman is set in rural County Armagh in Northern Ireland in late August 1981. It’s time for the harvest and a celebration, time for a festive family dinner punctuated with music and dancing. But before that happens, there is a prologue that takes place on a bleak street in Derry: Father Horrigan (Gerard Horan), a priest who knows the Carney family well, is called to a meeting with the sinister Mr Muldoon (Stuart Graham) who informs him that the body of Seamus Carney, who disappeared on New Year’s Day 1972, at the age of twenty, has been found in a peat bog in County Louth, shot in the back of the head as retribution for his defection from the IRA. The priest is instructed to take the message to the dead man’s family along with a warning—they are not to blame or bad mouth the IRA.
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“What would you like to do?’’ asked a friend coming into town for the day.
“Let’s go to Paris.”
“Paris?”
“Yes, I’ll meet you at the Paris theater. There’s a new film, ‘Colette,’ playing. Afterwards we can go to a little French restaurant for lunch and catch up. How’s that sound?”
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Summer just won’t let go. And where better to chill than a place that’s a bastion of cool, even during the dog days of August. Thinking such thoughts, I grabbed a sweater and headed for the Paris theater, across from the Plaza Hotel, to set sail for Tahiti, following in the wake of Gauguin.
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In the summer of 1890, in the small country town of Auvers-sur-Oise to the west of Paris, Vincent Van Gogh stumbled up the main street one evening, a bullet lodged in his stomach. The artist had a troubled history—the incident years earlier when he cut off a part of his ear is well-known—but it remained a mystery as to why and how he was shot. A regular whodunnit.
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A film quite unlike any other, “Faces Places” will steal your heart. A combination of a buddy road trip and a character study, this documentary stars the almost 90-year-old legendary filmmaker, Agnes Varda, and the photographer and muralist, JR, who is slightly more than one-third her age and an ‘enfant terrible,’ a naughty boy who began his career as a graffiti artist on the streets of Paris. A wonderful team, they delight in one another’s company, in the townspeople they meet along the way, and in the creation of art.
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Writers and film-makers continue to successfully mine stories stemming from World War 2. “The Innocents” is such a film—a Polish-French film by the director Anne Fontaine that takes place in December 1945. Based on real events as described by Madeleine Pauliac, a French Red Cross doctor who had served with French troops in war-torn Poland, the film illuminates the various crises of faith that befall a convent of nuns who have been ravaged by marauding Russian troops who forced their way into the monastery and raped the helpless women.
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Frédéric Tcheng’s terrific documentary, 'Dior and I,' tracks the eight-week lead up to Raf Simon’s debut collection for Dior in 2012. By way of confession, I have no particular interest in haute couture, nor have I ever hungered after a frock I saw paraded on a runway. But I am a huge fan of fashion documentaries, an interest that goes back twenty years to 'Unzipped,’ a glimpse at the 1994 fall collection—the Eskimo look was much in vogue—by the designer Isaac Mizrahi. The film was hilarious, a revelation; I was hooked. After that came 'The September Issue' (2009) a documentary about the editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, Anna Wintour, and her team of editors who rule the world of high fashion. All of which meant I could hardly wait to see ‘Dior and I,' which opened the Tribeca Film Festival April 17th.
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‘An American in Paris', a big-hearted exuberant musical with gorgeous music, dance-drunk choreography and outstanding performances, has raised the bar for excellence on Broadway. I was swept away. Following a highly successful forty-day run—a sellout—in Paris at the Chatelet Theater, it arrived a few weeks ago at the Palace Theater on Broadway.
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The 2015 Oscar buzz for Best Actress includes the award-winning Marion Cotillard as the depressed wife in Two Days, One Night. Having previously won an Oscar for her spellbinding performance as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose—only the second time an Oscar was awarded a woman for a non-English speaking performance—she’s up against stiff competition that includes Reese Witherspoon, Julianne Moore, Rosamund Pike, and Felicity Jones.
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