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      Jean-Philippe Allard, Jazz Producer and Musicians’ Advocate, Dies at 67

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      He called himself a “professional listener,” and he tended to develop lifelong relationships with the artists he worked with.Jean-Philippe Allard, a French record executive and producer who helped revive the careers of jazz greats who had been all but forgotten in the United States, and who earned a reputation for uncommonly fierce advocacy on behalf of musicians, died on May 17 in Paris. He was 67.The music producer Brian Bacchus, a close friend and frequent collaborator, said Mr. Allard died in a hospital from cancer, which had returned after a long remission.Artists ranging from Abbey Lincoln to Juliette Gréco to Kenny Barron all said they had never worked with a more musician-friendly producer.“Regarding my work, I would always consider it as co-producing with the artist,” Mr. Allard told the music journalist Willard Jenkins in an interview in March. “Some producers are musicians or arrangers, like Teo Maceo or Larry Klein; others are engineers; some are professional listeners. I would fall in this last category: listening to the artist before the session, listening to the music during the session, and listening to the mixing engineer.”He tended to develop lifelong relationships with the artists he worked with. “His ear was always open to the artist, and he was always concerned about what was best for the artist,” the vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater said in an interview. “He saw me. He embraced me. He wasn’t afraid of me. He encouraged my independence. He encouraged me speaking out.”Mr. Allard, right, in the studio with the bassist Charlie Haden, one of the many prominent jazz musicians he worked with.Cheung Ching Ming, via PolyGram/UniversalWe 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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      ‘Coma’ Review: A Labyrinthine Lockdown Movie

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      Bertrand Bonello’s latest horror film, dedicated to his teenage daughter, pushes the boundaries of the conventional pandemic movie.“Coma,” a pandemic-themed horror movie by the director Bertrand Bonello, takes its title from one of its two cloistered characters living in France during the coronavirus lockdown. Patricia Coma (Julia Faure) is a social media influencer whose channel is made up of surreal how-to videos, philosophical monologues and weather reports (though it doesn’t matter, “you can’t go out, anyway,” she explains).Watching Patricia is an unnamed teenage girl (Louise Labèque), moody and introspective as she spends her days in confinement glued to the screen.Don’t be misled by the more conventional pandemic scenes, like the teenager’s video chats with friends — “Coma” pushes the boundaries of the so-called lockdown movie with its thrilling, chaotic form.At first, it seemingly tracks the teenager’s online interactions: Patricia’s uncanny missives and a smutty sitcom played out by stop-motion dolls. We also see the teenager’s recurring nightmare, in which she’s trapped in a purgatorial forest, as well as surveillance footage in which she appears to be out in the streets.With Bonello’s fluid editing, the gradual spillover between scenes and intrusions by reality itself — then-President Trump’s tweets play a role — seems to flatten time. That’s certainly become a cliché in films like “Locked Down” or Bo Burnham’s “Inside,” but Bonello’s experimental approach brings a new level of desperation to this compressed version of reality.As a relatively short, minimalistic production, “Coma” plays like an amuse-bouche to Bonello’s recent epic “The Beast,” about the tragedy of characters who lack free will. Patricia is a kind of evangelist for this worldview. She sells an electronic memory game, like Simon, that the teenager plays to kill time, but, as if by some kind of dark magic, cannot seem to lose.The film begins and ends with a subtitled message written by Bonello to his daughter, to whom he dedicated the film. It acknowledges the unique despair of her generation — of children accustomed to climate change and school shootings; their best years spent online, trapped at home during a global pandemic.This message is also what makes “Coma” surpass the trappings of a lockdown movie: It may be anchored to that period, but it speaks to an existential crisis that defines many right now.ComaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Laurent Cantet, Whose Films Explored France’s Undersides, Dies at 63

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      His acclaimed “The Class” walked a provocative line between documentary and fiction. In that film and others, he explored the inescapable traps of late-stage capitalism.Laurent Cantet, an eminent director who made penetrating films about the prickly undersides of French life and society, died on April 25 in Paris. He was 63.His screenwriter and editor, Robin Campillo, said he died of cancer in a hospital.Mr. Cantet’s best-known film was “Entre les Murs” (“The Class”), which won the Palme d’Or, the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize, in 2008 and was nominated for an Oscar as best foreign-language film. “The Class” was something new in French filmmaking: an extended snapshot of the inside of a schoolroom in a working-class district of Paris, using a real-life ex-teacher and real-life schoolchildren and treading a provocative line between documentary and fiction.That ambiguity infuses the film with a rare tension, as a hapless language teacher struggles with his largely immigrant students, trying (with difficulty) to gain their acceptance of the strict rules of the French language, and French identity. In this frank chronicle of classroom life, the students, many of them from Africa, the Caribbean and Asia — bright, sometimes provocative — have the upper hand.Along the way, Mr. Cantet surgically exposes the fault lines in France’s faltering attempts at integration, showing exactly where the country’s rigid model is often impervious to the experience of its non-native citizens. Reviewing “The Class” in The New York Times, Manohla Dargis called it “artful, intelligent” and “urgently necessary.”The film touched a nerve in France, selling more than a million tickets. Right-leaning intellectuals like Alain Finkielkraut denounced it for devaluing classical French culture — unwittingly underscoring Mr. Cantet’s point.Mr. Cantet was invited to the Élysée Palace to discuss the film with President Nicolas Sarkozy. He declined the invitation. “I’m not going to speak about diversity with someone who invented the Ministry of National Identity,” Mr. Cantet said at the time, referring to one of Mr. Sarkozy’s more ill-fated initiatives.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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      Maurice El Medioni, Jewish Algerian Pianist, Dies at 95

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      He fused the music of his Sephardic roots with Arab traditions, incorporating boogie-woogie and other influences, to create a singular style.Maurice El Medioni, an Algerian-born pianist who fused Jewish and Arab musical traditions into a singular style he called “Pianoriental,” died on March 25 in Israel. He was 95.His death, at a nursing home in Herzliya, on Israel’s central coast, was confirmed by his manager, Yvonne Kahan.Mr. Medioni was a last representative of a once vibrant Jewish-Arab musical culture that flourished in North Africa before and after World War II and proudly drew from both heritages.In Oran, the Algerian port where he was born, he was sought after by Arabs and Jews alike to play at weddings and at banquets, in the years between the war and 1961, when the threat of violence and Algeria’s new independence from France drove Mr. Medioni and thousands of other Jews to flee.With his bounding octaves, his quasi-microtonal shifts in the style of traditional Arab music, his cheeky rumba rhythms learned from American G.I.s after the 1942 Allied invasion and his roots in the Jewish-Arab musical heritage called andalous, Mr. Medioni had honed a distinctive piano style by his early 20s. The singers he accompanied often alternated phrases in French and Arabic in a style known as “Françarabe.” His uncle Messaoud El Medioni was the famous musician known as Saoud L’Oranais, a leading practitioner of andalous who was deported by the Germans to the Sobibor death camp in 1943.The Medioni style remained buried and nearly forgotten for four decades as he pursued his trade as a men’s tailor. He kept it alive in private, performing at weddings and bar mitzvahs after he was forced to flee to France, until he released a breakthrough album, “Café Oran,” in 1996 at the age of 68. That led to a belated second life as a star of so-called world music — concert tours in Europe, appearances in documentary films and a major role as mentor to a new generation of Israeli musicians anxious to recover the musical heritage of their Sephardic heritage. In 2017, he published an autobiography, “A Memoir: From Oran to Marseilles (1938-1992),” which reproduces Mr. Medioni’s cursive scrawl, with a translation from the French.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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      Scientists at The Pasteur Institute in Paris Are Forming Musical Groups

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      The Pasteur Institute in Paris, known for its world-altering scientific research, has been making advancements in another field: the musical arts.The Pasteur Institute, since opening in the 15th Arrondissement in Paris in the late 1880s, has been recognized for world-altering scientific discoveries. The institute, named for Louis Pasteur, the pioneering French scientist who founded it, has contributed to the production of vaccines for tetanus and the flu and was at the forefront of discovering the virus that causes AIDS.In recent years, the Pasteur Institute has made advancements in another field — the musical arts — as some of its scientists have formed bands and other acts involving colleagues as well as students who have studied there. That cohort has honed its musical passion and ability at an on-site studio they call the music lab.On a Friday evening in March, three acts developed in the lab headlined an event held at the institute’s cafeteria. They included Polaris and also Billie and the What?!, both blues-rock bands, and an a cappella group, Les Papillons, or “the butterflies” in English.Some performers in the a cappella group Les Papillons, or “the butterflies” in English, accessorized their outfits with wings. Cedrine Scheidig for The New York TimesGermano Cecere, a director at the institute, center rear on the drums, performed with his band Billie and the What?!Cedrine Scheidig for The New York TimesMoody purple light bathed the room, which was decorated with balloons and streamers in shades of pink, gold and white. It was filled with more than a hundred people, as well as with an array of equipment, including mics, speakers, guitars and an elaborate drum kit.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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      #MeToo Stalled in France. Judith Godrèche Might Be Changing That.

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      Judith Godrèche did not set out to relaunch the #MeToo movement in France’s movie industry.She came back to Paris from Los Angeles in 2022 to work on “Icon of French Cinema,” a TV series she wrote, directed and starred in — a satirical poke at her acting career that also recounts how, at the age of 14, she entered into an abusive relationship with a film director 25 years older.Then, a week after the show aired, in late December, a viewer’s message alerted her to a 2011 documentary that she says made her throw up and start shaking as if she were “naked in the snow.”There was the same film director, admitting that their relationship had been a “transgression” but arguing that “making films is a kind of cover” for forms of “illicit traffic.”She went to the police unit specialized in crimes against children — its waiting room was filled with toys and a giant teddy bear, she recalls — to file a report for rape of a minor.“There I was,” said Ms. Godrèche, now 52, “at the right place, where I’ve been waiting to be since I was 14.”Since then, Ms. Godrèche has been on a campaign to expose the abuse of children and women that she believes is stitched into the fabric of French cinema. Barely a week has gone by without her appearance on television and radio, in magazines and newspapers, and even before the French Parliament, where she demanded an inquiry into sexual violence in the industry and protective measures for children.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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      Aya Nakamura, French-Malian Singer, Is Caught in Olympic Storm

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      In four months, France will host the Paris Olympics, but which France will show up? Torn between tradition and modernity, the country is in the midst of an identity crisis.The possible choice for the opening ceremony of Aya Nakamura, a superstar French-Malian singer whose slang-spiced lyrics stand at some distance from academic French, has ignited a furor tinged with issues of race and linguistic propriety and the politics of immigration. Right-wing critics say Ms. Nakamura’s music does not represent France, and the prospect of her performing has led to a barrage of racist insults online against her. The Paris prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation.The outcry has compounded a fight over an official poster unveiled this month: a pastel rendering of the city’s landmarks thronging with people in a busy style reminiscent of the “Where’s Waldo?” children’s books.Right-wing critics have attacked the image as a deliberate dilution of the French nation and its history in a sea of sugary, irreproachable blandness most evident in the removal of the cross atop the golden dome of the Invalides, the former military hospital where Napoleon is buried. An opinion essay in the right-wing Journal du Dimanche said “the malaise of a nation in the throes of deconstruction” was in full view.The rapid immersion of the Olympics in France’s culture wars has its roots in a meeting on Feb. 19 at the Élysée Palace between President Emmanuel Macron and Ms. Nakamura, 28. Mr. Macron, doubling as the artistic director of the Olympics, asked if she would perform.The official poster of the Olympic Games in Paris has been attacked by right-wing critics as a deliberate dilution of the French nation and its history.Thierry Chesnot/Getty ImagesWe 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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      Micheline Presle, Actress Known for ‘Devil in the Flesh,’ Dies at 101

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      A link to France’s first golden age of cinema, she drew international attention for a 1947 film that created a scandal in France and was banned in Britain for years.Micheline Presle, a subtle and elegant actress who was a last link to the first golden age of French cinema, died on Feb. 21 in Nogent-sur-Marne, a suburb of Paris. She was 101.Her death, at the Maison des Artistes, a retirement home for artists partly funded by the government, was confirmed by her son-in-law, Olivier Bomsel.Ms. Presle (pronounced prell) was the final survivor of a trio of actresses — Danièlle Darrieux and Michèle Morgan were the other two — who were already stars in France by the outbreak of World War II, and who defined a certain style of French femininity, both at home and abroad. Ms. Presle’s subtle facial expressions conjured a wide range of human emotions, particularly in two films that, by critical consent, she never surpassed, “Le Diable au Corps,” or “Devil in the Flesh” (1947), and “Boule de Suif” (1945).A poster for “Le Diable au Corps,” known in English as “Devil in The Flesh,” featuring Ms. Presle and Gerard Philipe. The film was, one critic said, “the major work of her career.”Everette CollectionBoth of those films were based on masterpieces of French literature: The first was adapted from a novel by the brilliant but short-lived author Raymond Radiguet; the second from two short stories by Guy de Maupassant. These subtle and complex tales drew on Ms. Presle’s versatility.“Le Diable au Corps” depicted the passionate affair between a young woman, played by Ms. Presle, whose husband was away fighting in the trenches in World War I, and a teenage schoolboy, played by the very young Gérard Philipe, who during his brief career was both France’s leading heartthrob and its greatest actor.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