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    Philippe Labro Dies at 88; Restless Chronicler of the French Condition

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    As an author (often blurring the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction), a film director, a lyricist and a host of TV and radio shows, he sought to capture his epoch.Philippe Labro, a prolific journalist, author, movie director and songwriter whose lyrical prose, boundless curiosity and oft-repeated determination to “forage in deep waters” offered France a sweeping image of itself over several decades, died on Monday in Paris. He was 88.His death, in the Pitié Salpêtrière hospital, was caused by lymphoma of the brain, which was diagnosed in April, said Anne Boy, his longtime assistant. Mr. Labro lived in Paris.A restless spirit, notebook always at his side, convinced that journalism was an exercise in unrelenting observation, Mr. Labro pursued a lifelong quest to capture his epoch by any means. “He wrote our popular, French, and universal history,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a tribute on X, “from Algeria to America” and from Herman Melville to Johnny Hallyday, the French rock ’n’ roll superstar.In 24 books, including novels and essays; seven movies; lyrics to popular songs; and several television and radio shows, Mr. Labro probed the enigma of existence. No one medium sufficed. Truth, he believed, lurked between fact and fiction, and so he refused to be confined by one or the other. Quoting Einstein, he called life a “dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.” That piper was his muse.Mr. Labro arrived as a guest for an official state dinner with President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the first lady, Jill Biden, at the Élysée Palace in Paris in June 2024.Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Labro also liked Victor Hugo’s observation that “nothing is more imminent than the impossible.” He had good reason. It was in the United States, on Nov. 22, 1963, that Mr. Labro, then 27, achieved fame as the first French newspaper correspondent on the scene in the immediate aftermath of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      France’s Eurovision act, Louane, wants to tell her mom she’s OK.

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      Reporting from from the St. Jakobshalle arena in BaselLouane singing “Maman,” a song addressed to her mother, who died of cancer.Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhen Louane was offered the chance to represent France at Eurovision, she immediately knew what she wanted to sing about: her mother.As a child growing up in a small town, Louane, whose real name is Anne Peichert, watched Eurovision with her parents and five siblings while gathered around the TV eating pizza. Even when it wasn’t Eurovision season, Louane recalled in an interview, her mother would put on videos of Celine Dion’s winning performance from 1988, and they would watch together, mesmerized by the Canadian singer’s voice.Those happy Eurovision sessions ended abruptly in 2014 when Louane’s mother died from cancer.A star in France with five hit albums, Louane, now 28, said that over the past decade she had written and sung many songs expressing grief and anger over her mother’s death.Her Eurovision track, a powerful ballad called “Maman,” has an altogether different message, however. “It’s a letter to my mother saying: ‘I’m finally fine. I’m finally good in my life. I am, myself, a mother,’” Louane said. “It’s a super special song to me.”Louane makes that transformation clear when she sings in French: “I’m better now / I know the way / I’m done walking down this memory lane.”Louane said the track had a secondary message that went beyond her own story. “What I’m going to try and make everyone understand,” she said, “is that even through the deepest pain, deepest sadness, you can find a way to be better, to finally be well.” More

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      ‘The President’s Wife’ Review: Would Madame Get Your Vote?

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      Catherine Deneuve plays the former French first lady Bernadette Chirac in this puckish, highly fictionalized biopic with a pop-feminist edge.From 1995 to 2007, the conservative (if politically capricious) Jacques Chirac was the president of France. But, “The President’s Wife” isn’t all that interested in Chirac, played as a clueless yet charismatic charlatan by Michel Vuillermoz. The first lady, Bernadette Chirac, gets the spotlight, with the French film icon Catherine Deneuve bringing glamour and droll gusto to the part.Spanning the years of Chirac’s presidency, this low-key comedy by Léa Domenach tracks the evolution of Bernadette’s public image from scorned spouse in kitschy-colored skirt suits to beloved girl-boss in modern Chanel threads. A Greek chorus of church singers and a disclaimer in the opening title cards tell us that this quasi-biopic is highly fictionalized. No, Bernadette didn’t secretly meet with rival politicians in confessional booths or frequent nightclubs with pop stars to rally fund-raising for her children’s hospital charity.The film takes creative leaps in scenes like these as part of its puckish approach to mythmaking. Though other seemingly absurd moments are ripped straight from the TV news archives, such as her visit with Hillary Clinton to a primary school in central France (Deneuve is transposed onto footage of that real-life encounter with the help of green-screen tech).Belittled by rivals and family members alike — including her daughter Claude (Sara Giraudeau), who is one of her father’s advisers — Bernadette teams up with her chief of staff, Bernard Niquet (Denis Podalydès), to revamp her political career. The duo’s scheming and easy rapport make up much of the film’s brisk humor, which at times can be a bit too culturally specific to resonate fully with non-French viewers. And while Deneuve brings a wonderful blend of neuroses and feigned indifference to her character, the film’s pop-feminist through line dulls the comedy, creating a more conventionally celebratory portrait.The President’s WifeNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Conductor John Nelson Dead at 83

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      He revived interest in a “problem child” in the pantheon of high romantic composers, bringing Berlioz overdue recognition as one of France’s greatest composers.John Nelson, a genial American conductor who made France love one of its own underappreciated musical sons, Hector Berlioz, died on March 31 at his home in Chicago. He was 83.His death was confirmed by his daughter, Kari Magdalena Chronopoulos, who did not specify the cause.Mr. Nelson made Berlioz (1803-1869), the wild man of 19th-century French music, his passion, performing and promoting his work ceaselessly during a career that stretched over 50 years on both sides of the Atlantic.As a young conductor, he introduced Berlioz’s epic five-act opera “Les Troyens” (“The Trojans”) to New York in a 1972 Carnegie Hall performance deemed “highly successful” at the time by Raymond Ericson of The New York Times.By the end of his career, Mr. Nelson was so closely identified with Berlioz, one of France’s most extravagant musicians, that the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph wrote, “John Nelson was clearly born with Berlioz in his genes.”That remark came in a 2017 review of Mr. Nelson’s much-praised recording of “Les Troyens” with the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra and a cast that included the American soprano Joyce DiDonato.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pedro Almodóvar Inspires a New Roche Bobois Collection

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      Roche Bobois reintroduces classic pieces that reflect the Spanish filmmaker’s palette.This article is part of our Design special report previewing Milan Design Week.Known for palettes that are as flamboyant as his characters, the Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar uses color as an actor with its own dramatic energy. Recently, he teamed up with Roche Bobois, also renowned for its splashy color sense, to modify classic works from the French furniture company’s catalog that will be introduced in Roche Bobois’s Milan showroom during the city’s Design Week.The Lounge sofa, for example, a precursor of the company’s modular Mah Jong seating that was originally designed in 1971 by Hans Hopfer, is being reissued in an edition of 50 for this occasion. Each sofa will feature iconic images from Almodóvar movies and film posters, and will be signed and numbered by the director.Also on view will be the 11-year-old Bubble sofa, designed by Sacha Lakic. Bubble will be shown in four new colors — sky, moss, sun and fiery red — that are heroes of Mr. Almodóvar’s most recent film, “The Room Next Door,” a meditation on friendship and death starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, which was released late last year. (The sofa itself has a cameo in that movie, popping up in a scene set in a gym.)A rendering of Roche Bobois’s updated Lounge sofa, which is being reissued in a limited edition and has the bright colors and iconic images from Almodóvar movies and film posters.A sideboard from Roche Bobois’s Rondo collection has been updated with new door panels featuring designs inspired by film posters and Almodóvar’s own still-life photos. The director also designed rugs and cushions that have movie poster motifs, including the floral pattern representing “Volver” (2006), the heavily mascaraed eyes from “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” (1988) and the deadly stiletto signifying “High Heels” (1991).Apart from the limited-edition Lounge sofa, the collection will be available for purchase in mid-September, in Roche Bobois stores.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘When Fall Is Coming’ Review: Cooking Up a Mystery

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      With her kind eyes and guileless smile, Hélène Vincent plays a sweet old French lady. But looks can be deceiving in this François Ozon film.For “When Fall Is Coming,” the French filmmaker François Ozon has cooked up a little mystery and an enigmatic heroine. A sleek, modestly scaled entertainment about families, secrets and obligations, it features fine performances and some picture-postcard Burgundian locations. It’s there in the heart of France, in a picturesque village in a large, pretty house, that Michelle (Hélène Vincent) makes her home. With her kind eyes, guileless smile and upswept hair, she looks the very picture of a sweet old lady. Looks can be deceiving, though, as we’re reminded, and as Ozon’s movie goes along, that picture grows amusingly slyer.Ozon’s efficiency and polished style are among his appeals — his films include “Under the Sand” and “Swimming Pool” — and he lays out this movie with silky ease. In precise, illustrative scenes he takes you on the rounds with Michelle, mapping her pleasant environs, charting her routines and introducing her small circle of intimates, including another local, Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko), a longtime, charmingly earthy friend. For the most part, the pieces fit together, though a few things seem off. For one, Marie-Claude’s son, Vincent (Pierre Lottin), is in jail when the movie opens (though soon out); for another, Michelle’s daughter, Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier), is viscerally, inexplicably, hostile to her mother.Michelle’s life and the setup seem so pacific that the movie initially teeters on the soporific; which works as a sneaky bit of misdirection. Because just when everything seems a little too frictionless, someone prepares poisonous mushrooms for lunch, and someone else eats them, a turn that puts you on alert (where you stay). Ozon, who also wrote the script, continues to lightly thicken the plot but also withholds information, and before you know it, this obvious story has become an intrigue. One bad thing leads to another (and another), and the air crackles with menace. Michelle and Valérie argue, Marie-Claude falls seriously ill, Vincent takes a suspicious trip. Yet the more that things happen, the less you know.Ozon sprinkles the story with hints, summons up the ghost of Claude Chabrol (bonjour!) and, during one vividly hued autumn walk, evokes Grimm’s fairy-tale “Snow-White and Rose-Red,” about two sisters. He also foregrounds doubles: The sisterly Michelle and Marie-Claude don’t have partners, and each has a difficult adult kid. Despite their nominal similarities, Valérie and Vincent are notably different; he and his mom are openly loving, for one. By contrast, the minute that Valérie and her son, Lucas (Garlan Erlos), drive in from Paris to visit Michelle, the mood turns ugly. Valérie is petulant and nakedly greedy, and she soon asks for Michelle’s house. “I’ll owe less in taxes when you die,” she says before taking a swig of wine.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Ravel Work Premieres at the New York Phil After Nearly 125 Years

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      A prelude and dance by the French master recently surfaced in a Paris library. Gustavo Dudamel and the New York Philharmonic will give the world premiere.The conductor Gustavo Dudamel has premiered dozens of pieces in his career.But the score that he was giddily studying on a recent afternoon at Lincoln Center was different: a nearly 125-year-old piece by the French composer Maurice Ravel that had only recently surfaced in a Paris library.“Imagine more than 100 years later discovering a small, beautiful jewel,” Dudamel, the incoming music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic, said in an interview at David Geffen Hall. “It’s precious.”On Thursday, Dudamel and the Philharmonic will give the world premiere of the five-minute piece as part of a program celebrating the 150th birthday of Ravel, one of the leading composers of the 20th century, whose works include “Boléro,” “Le Tombeau de Couperin” and “La Valse.”The newly found piece, “Sémiramis: Prélude et Danse,” was written sometime between 1900 and 1902, when Ravel was in his late 20s and sparring with administrators at the Paris Conservatory, where he studied piano and composition.The work, from an unfinished cantata about the Babylonian queen Semiramis, reveals a young musician still honing his voice and looking to others, like the Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov, for inspiration. “Sémiramis” lacks some of the lush textures and rich harmonies for which Ravel would become known — he was a master of blending French impressionism, Spanish melodies, baroque, jazz and other music — though there are hints of his unconventional style.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      French Cinema Celebrates Its Covid Recovery

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      The French movie industry has been celebrating statistics that show an increase in movie attendance.Ronald Chammah, who owns a pair of small cinemas on the Left Bank of Paris, remembers well the grim days in 2022, when he wondered whether the French passion for moviegoing — a pastime that France invented 130 years ago — had been irreparably diminished by pandemic lockdowns.But that was then. On a recent afternoon, Mr. Chammah was sitting in a packed Parisian cafe happily describing the Sunday in late November when he sold out screenings from a roster of Armenian art-house directors — Inna Mkhitaryan, Artavazd Pelechian, Sergueï Paradjanov — known mostly to hard-core film buffs.“That day, we broke the record for our theaters,” Mr. Chammah said with a note of astonishment. “It was full, all day long — sold out, sold out, sold out.”The global movie business had a disappointing 2024, thanks in part to Hollywood strikes. At the Oscars on Sunday, Sean Baker, winner of best director for “Anora,” used his acceptance speech to lament the pandemic-era loss of hundreds of American movie screens. “And we continue to lose them regularly,” Mr. Baker said. “If we don’t reverse this trend, we’ll be losing a vital part of our culture.”But in France, there has been a more celebratory feeling of late, with fresh statistics suggesting that its audiences are leading the way in returning to what are lovingly known as “les salles obscures” — the “dark rooms” of their movie theaters.That celebration was infused with a very French idea about citizens’ moral obligation to support the arts and to do so somewhere other than at home. The Institut Lumière, a film society based in Lyon, declared that last year’s French admissions numbers amounted to a triumph over both the pandemic era and the “invasive digital civilization” of scrolling and swiping.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Charles Dumont, Who Wrote Enduring Melodies for Édith Piaf, Dies at 95

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      His dozens of songs included “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien,” a powerful anthem of redemptive love that became one of Piaf’s signature songs.Charles Dumont, who wrote the music for “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien,” the soaring song about sweeping away the past to find love anew that the hallowed but troubled singer Édith Piaf turned into an anthem of French culture, died on Nov. 18 at his home in Paris. He was 95.His death was confirmed by his daughter Sherkane Dumont.Mr. Dumont had a prolific career, writing melodies for the likes of Jacques Brel, Juliette Gréco and Barbra Streisand and music for French television and film. In the 1970s, he embarked on an award-winning career as romantic crooner.Still, it was the roughly 30 songs that he, with the lyricist Michel Vaucaire, wrote for Piaf — the diminutive and radiant chanteuse known as the Little Sparrow — that, by his own admission, defined his career. “My mother gave birth to me, but Édith Piaf brought me into the world,” Mr. Dumont said in a 2015 interview with Agence France-Presse.“Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” (“No, I Regret Nothing”), introduced in 1960, became a definitive song for a definitive French singer, a woman who became not just a global star but also a cultural ambassador for her country.With its martial solemnity, the song had the feel of a patriotic anthem, which gave power and drama to lyrics that express, in blunt and defiant terms, a rejection of past memories, both good and bad, while moving toward a new future.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More