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      in Theater

      ‘Emily in Paris’ Isn’t the Only Clichéd Show in This Town

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      Netflix doesn’t qualify as a solo offender when it comes to Gallic stereotypes, as three musical theater works on the city’s stages show.PARIS — There’s been no shortage of complaints from Parisians about the Netflix series “Emily in Paris.” Yet an endless stream of clichés about the city — from cafes by the Louvre to chain smoking and ménages à trois — isn’t merely the province of Americans. French artists indulge, too; at home, however, rose-tinted nostalgia hits differently.Musical theater has been a frequent offender, and recently, mythical visions of Paris have been on offer at two rival playhouses. At the Théâtre du Châtelet, the city often felt like the protagonist of “Cole Porter in Paris,” a musical set in the 1920s; the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées roped the designer Christian Lacroix into lending period glamour to Jacques Offenbach’s operetta “La Vie Parisienne” (“Parisian Life”).And the stereotypes woven into their fabrics, by and large, are the same. Luxury fashion? Check. Casual philandering? Check. Entitled members of the bourgeoisie? Check.“Cole Porter in Paris,” especially, is an odd offering. Created and directed by Christophe Mirambeau, it is a jukebox musical of Porter hits. The songs are uneasily stitched into a plot about the years the composer spent in the French capital, from 1917 to 1928. His love for the city ran deep: Porter’s first Broadway hit was called simply “Paris,” and he often turned to this formative period for inspiration after his return to the United States.Mirambeau draws from Porter’s large oeuvre — inserting only George and Ira Gershwin’s “The Man I Love” as a bonus — to conjure nostalgic visions from les années folles (“the crazy years,” as the 1920s are known in French). The result is a breathless tour of a decade of French culture, filtered through an American sensibility and repackaged.The World of ‘Emily in Paris’The Netflix show, starring Lily Collins in the role of an American social media wiz in the French capital, is back for a second season. Emily, C’est Moi: As an American in Paris, our critic used to look down on Emily. He then realized they have more in common than he thought. Emily’s Closet: The show was derided for its unrealistic approach to French dressing.  These looks define the upcoming season.The French Reaction: The response of actual Parisians to the first season was “ridicule” — French for ridiculous and absurd, as well as amusing.The Man Behind the Show: Darren Star, who also created “Sex and the City,” has specialized in escapist visions of the urban female experience.“I love Paris every moment,” three singers inform us in the opening number, drawn from Porter’s 1953 musical, “Can-Can.” The backdrop then rises to reveal the Eiffel Tower. When Linda Lee Thomas, Porter’s future wife, appears, she immediately launches into “You Don’t Know Paree,” first heard in “Fifty Million Frenchmen,” in 1929. (“Paree” appears in the title of three more of the evening’s songs.)With 29 numbers, the production is a musical marathon, which explains why the role of Porter is shared by three performers (Richard Delestre, Yoni Amar and Matthieu Michard). The orchestra Les Frivolités Parisiennes, which specializes in French comic opera from the 19th and 20th centuries, provided rousing backing onstage throughout.But who is the target audience? More often than not, Porter’s life serves as a flimsy excuse to flit from number to number and to drop the names of cultural figures like the impresario Serge Diaghilev and the dancer and club owner Ada “Bricktop” Smith. And for Parisians, there is something alienating about uncritical re-enactments of a perceived Golden Age.Rodolphe Briand, left, as Gardefeu and Laurent Deleuil as Bobinet in “La Vie Parisienne,” directed by Christian Lacroix at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.Marie PétryParisian mythmaking is typically centered around a handful of eras, and at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, “La Vie Parisienne” harks back to an earlier one: the Second Empire, which lasted from 1852 to 1870. At the time, Napoleon III gave Georges-Eugène Haussmann free rein to rebuild the capital, driving rapid growth. In that context, Offenbach’s 1866 operetta aimed to portray the real lives of (some) Parisians — namely, two dandies, Gardefeu and Bobinet, who can’t decide whether to focus their attentions on promiscuous demimondaines or respectable society ladies.Offenbach both celebrates and satirizes their lifestyle. Their entanglements with two Danish characters, the Baron and Baroness Gondremarck, show aspects of the city’s growing international appeal. The Baroness seeks cultural thrills; the Baron is more interested in becoming acquainted with the aforementioned demimondaines.“La Vie Parisienne” is the directing debut of Lacroix, the designer, whom the playbill describes as a “born nostalgic.” Over the past four decades, he has created costumes for a long list of operas, ballets and plays, often drawing on original sources. A keen historian, he looked to period fashion as well as to some of the 1866 designs for “La Vie Parisienne’s” premiere, and the result is luxurious.For lovers of Offenbach, there is an additional thrill. With the help of researchers from the Palazzetto Bru Zane, a Venice-based music center, the production restores portions of the score that were cut because the original cast protested their difficulty. The five acts (rather than the usual four), conducted with joyful vigor by Romain Dumas, fly by, and an ensemble of dancers and acrobats make a welcome contemporary addition to the proceedings.Yet “La Vie Parisienne” and “Cole Porter in Paris” both feel like extensions of a similar script. Paris, we are told, is synonymous with sexual freedom. Porter’s homosexuality and his relationship with the Russian poet Boris Kochno are strong features of “Cole Porter in Paris,” while the newly revived fifth act of “La Vie Parisienne” waxes lyrical about its setting, a cafe known for providing very discreet salons for its clients.It’s an appealing myth, which has left many in France unwilling to examine to whom, and how, that freedom actually applied. It was largely limited to a small, well-to-do subset of the population. And if Paris is the city of hedonistic romance, the argument goes, why regulate office affairs or tamp down on harassment today? “Trying to steal a kiss, or speaking about ‘intimate’ things at a work dinner” — isn’t it part of French culture, as Catherine Deneuve and others implied in an open letter in the wake of the #MeToo movement?The ensemble in “Chance!,” written and directed by Hervé Devolder, at the Théâtre La Bruyère.LOTThe allure of a bourgeois office affair is also irresistible in homegrown French musicals in which Paris is just an incidental backdrop, like the witty and unassuming “Chance!” Written and directed by Hervé Devolder, and currently installed at the small Théâtre La Bruyère, this romantic comedy featuring three heterosexual couples and set in a Paris law firm has proved a long-running success, with over 1,300 performances at venues around the city since its premiere in 2001.“Chance!” contains multiple references to American musicals, but its attitude to workplace romances is decidedly French. Not only are these encouraged, but when the boss says he may have committed sexual harassment by propositioning one of his employees, the idea is swiftly dismissed: That’s impossible, the characters decide, since she loves him back.In “Emily in Paris,” the situation would be treated as a French quirk, providing viewers with an exotic frisson. But what are real-life Parisians to do with this idealized Paris? Take a hard look at it, for starters.Cole Porter in Paris. Directed by Christophe Mirambeau. Théâtre du Châtelet.La Vie Parisienne. Directed by Christian Lacroix. Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, through Jan. 9.Chance! Directed by Hervé Devolder. Théâtre La Bruyère, through Jan. 15. More

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      in Movies

      Wes Anderson’s Dream of France, and the Paris I Remember

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      With “The French Dispatch,” the director’s latest, yet another American artist falls under the country’s spell. The Times’s Paris bureau chief recalls when the same thing happened to him.PARIS — At the premiere on Sunday before the release of his latest movie, “The French Dispatch,” Wes Anderson stood onstage in a rumpled, brownish suit and told the crowd packed into a Champs-Élysées theater, “I have a French air about me.” He had, he said, “spent my whole life feeling I am in a French movie.”Now this artful Texan and sometime Parisian with a tousled Left-Bank look has made a film so French that not a Gallic cliché is omitted. The trees are pollarded, the shutters are largely drawn, the police tend toward Inspector Clouseau look-alikes. The streets of the fictional town of Ennui-sur-Blasé — roughly translated as Boredom-on-the-World-Weary — are dotted with rats beneath steeply pitched zinc roofs, and, of course, the talk is of love and art and gastronomic pleasure.Ennui (a word that conveys a peculiarly French sense of tedium mixed with spleen) is home to The French Dispatch, an English-language magazine whose avowed inspiration is The New Yorker. In Anderson’s telling, the fictional publication existed between 1925 and 1975 under the editorship of a certain Arthur Howitzer, Jr., who keeps as close an eye on his journalists’ expense reports as on any redundant phrase in their copy. Howitzer is loosely modeled on Harold Ross and William Shawn, the co-founder and longtime editor of the magazine that “The French Dispatch” relocates from Manhattan.The movie, however, is scarcely about journalism, apart from the occasional musing of a reporter named Lucinda Krementz (played by Frances McDormand and inspired by Mavis Gallant and Lillian Ross) who covers a mock-up of the May 1968 student uprising. “I should maintain journalistic neutrality,” she says. “If it exists.”Rather, Anderson’s nostalgia-laced film is about an old subject: the American writer in Paris. It evokes how French sensuality and style and beauty and surly realism — so completely distinct from can-do American optimism and the functional drabness of Main Street U.S.A. — can facilitate artistic reinvention and afford the space to dream.I arrived in Paris in 1975, just as The French Dispatch was ending its life, and later began work for a fortnightly American magazine called The Paris Metro, whose brief but passionate life extended from 1976 to 1978. The tone was more Village Voice than The French Dispatch, and it was a thrilling way to start in journalism. I explored the redevelopment of the Les Halles wholesale food market — then a gaping hole in the center of the city — and wrote about a suburban warehouse disco that was drawing a chic crowd all the way from St. Germain-des-Prés.The whiff of garlic, sauvignon blanc and Gauloises was still strong on the early-morning subway and there was still a horse butcher on every other block. At The Paris Metro, we all thought we were living a charmed life, however straitened our individual circumstances might be. Heck, Parisians, whatever their sophistication, needed tough, raw American journalism to see their city and culture anew. The magazine was a popular success that might have benefited from Howitzer’s attention to expense accounts.I discovered that, despite appearances, I was born an outsider. France was liberating, just as the movies of Godard, Renoir, Truffaut and Varda clearly were for Anderson. They were guides to unimagined possibility, so different in pacing and theme and structure from much of Hollywood.“I have stolen many things from your cinema,” Anderson told the Paris audience at the premiere.Theft may be a tribute, just as cultural difference may be a stimulant. The French phrase “Bof, c’est normal” — “bof” is an untranslatable French verbal shrug — fascinated me, so, at The Paris Metro, I wrote about the French reluctance to be shocked by any human antics, all waved away as “normal.” A short story called “A Slit Skirt” about a vagrant exploring the underside of Paris found its way into print but is probably best forgotten. Still, it reflected a young man’s urge to create, with Paris as the perfect backdrop.If good cheap food and wine were everywhere in those late ’70s days, beauty also overflowed: the wide bright sky on the banks of the Seine, the low-slung bridges with their subtle fulcrums, the golden domes and verdigris statuary, the streets that beckoned and the boulevards that summoned, the overflowing markets and the islands pointing their prows at the river. Paris seemed unreasonably generous.This French generosity is alluded to in “The French Dispatch” with a wistful longing by Roebuck Wright (played by Jeffrey Wright and loosely modeled on James Baldwin and A.J. Liebling), who appears in the fourth and last of the short episodes that make up the movie. He started, as he tells Howitzer, in “fires and murders,” but has moved on to the intrigues of gastronomy. He embarks on an investigation of the table of the chief of the municipal police, whose chef, Mr. Nescaffier (Steve Park), has earned a certain renown with his Blasé city park pigeon hash, among other delicacies.Journalism can be lonely, but Wright describes how invariably, on some French street, he would find “a table set for me” with its bottle of wine — “my solitary feast, my comrade.” France has modernized, of course, but it has also resisted the brand-obsessed homogenization of Anglophone countries. The comfort of that table, and the solicitous service tended to it, remain something accessible across France, as distinct as the unctuous yet mineral perfection of a Gillardeau oyster.Nescaffier, the chef, is poisoned as the police chief tries to free his kidnapped son. On his recovery, in a wonderful scene, he describes with rapture the flavor of the toxic salts in the radishes — milky, peppery, spicy, not entirely unpleasant. “A new flavor! A rare thing at my age!” he explains, with corpses strewn about.Whether the highly stylized, risibly mannered goings-on in Ennui-sur-Blasé are a mocking pastiche of what Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, James Baldwin and countless others found in the movable feast of France, or a Francophile director’s loving paean to that tradition, is one of those riddles that Anderson likes to play with. “I offer the film to France with admiration and respect and a little envy,” he said. Perhaps that was a clue.France clearly has an emotional hold on the director. It was the French epicure Brillat-Savarin who noted: “I have drawn the following inference, that the limits of pleasure are as yet neither known nor fixed.” In food, as in love. When, in the second story of the movie, the imprisoned painter Moses Rosenthaler (played by Benicio del Toro) makes love to his prison guard and model, identified only as Simone (Léa Seydoux), he murmurs to her “I love you.”“I don’t love you,” she says.“Already?”That French realism never goes away.I was reminded of the scene in Godard’s “La Chinoise,” in which two young Maoist revolutionaries — these are students with real heft and serious beliefs — are also lovers. A scene consists of the young man saying “Je t’aime” and the young woman saying “Je ne t’aime plus.” Some things just sound better in French, but, OK, if you insist on a translation: “I love you,” “I no longer love you.”Yes, Anderson has stolen things, but immersed in the cornucopia of France, how could he or any other American artist do otherwise? More

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      in Television

      Homer Simpson Was Made for Fashion

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      Behind the painstaking creation of the Balenciaga-Simpsons episode that took nearly a year to make.Clapping, whispering, cameras snapping, questionable music: These are the sounds of a classic fashion show. Bursts of laughter? Those are less common.Yet several were heard last Saturday night, rolling around the 19th-century Parisian theater where the great and storied house of Cristóbal Balenciaga skipped the traditional catwalk and screened a special 10-minute episode of “The Simpsons.”It was a surprise more than a year in the making, and the result of a sometimes grueling collaboration between two exacting creative entities known for their attention to detail. So far it has been viewed more than five million times on YouTube.In the episode, Homer writes to Balenciaga (“Dear Balun, Balloon, Baleen, Balenciaga-ga,” he says as he struggles to pronounce the famous fashion name) for Marge’s birthday, explaining that his wife has always wanted to own something by the brand. He asks for the cheapest item, which the Balenciaga team interprets as “just one of those American gags nobody gets” and sends him a dress that costs 19,000 euros. After wearing it briefly, Marge returns the dress with a note saying she’ll “always remember those 30 minutes of feeling just a little special.”Back in Europe, the Balenciaga artistic director Demna Gvasalia declares her note “the saddest thing I’ve ever heard, and I grew up in the Soviet Union. This is exactly the kind of woman I want to reach!” He then travels to Springfield and decides to “rescue” the “style-deprived” by inviting them to model his clothes in Paris, explaining that he wants “the world to see real people in my show.”The 10 minutes are packed with Easter eggs for die-hard fans of both “The Simpsons” and Balenciaga. A private Balenciaga jet has landing gear that looks like the brand’s famous sock sneakers; Waylon Smithers chooses a dress to wear when given his choice of outfit; Lisa at first acknowledges that walking a runway is “superficial” but then enjoys it immensely.The collaboration began in April 2020, when Mr. Gvasalia sent the “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening an email about working together.Marge in the golden ballroom dress from the summer 2020 collection.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationMr. Gvasalia, 40, who was born in Georgia and watched the show when he was growing up, said the idea came to him during the first lockdown of 2020. He has a penchant for inserting Balenciaga into mass-market trends: Under his direction, the brand has collaborated with other American sensations, like Crocs and Fortnite.About “The Simpsons,” he said, “I always loved the tongue-in-cheek humor, the romance and the charming naïveness of it.”Al Jean, an executive producer and writer of “The Simpsons,” said that when he learned of the Balenciaga project in January, “my response was, ‘What’s Balenciaga?’” He turned to Wikipedia for answers.His first pitch to Balenciaga had a similar framing to the one they ended up going with — Marge’s birthday wish — but diverged with Mr. Gvasalia’s character deciding that the brand’s next show would be held in Springfield. When the Balenciaga plane lands there, its models aren’t allowed into the United States because they’re too thin and beautiful. Springfield’s residents become the models, their nuclear plant is the runway, and the ghost of Mr. Balenciaga makes an appearance.But Balenciaga preferred that Springfield be brought to Paris, Mr. Jean said. From there, the story was revised and tweaked — to the point that the writers joked about “Draft 52 of the Balenciaga script” — up until two days before the Paris showing.Mr. Gvasalia made specific contributions to the script, Mr. Jean said. For example, the episode ends with Homer embracing and singing “La Mer” to Marge on a post-show party boat on the Seine. But Mr. Gvasalia wanted one final joke, so he asked that Homer’s jacket be set on fire by a Frenchman smoking a cigar. Mr. Jean then suggested that Anna Wintour, who had appeared in the front row of the fashion show, try to put out the fire with expensive champagne, which Homer tries to drink instead.“She said, ‘Please don’t have me do that,’ so it became Demna,” Mr. Jean said. (Ms. Wintour otherwise approved of her likeness being used but declined to voice her character, he said.) And that earlier line about Mr. Gvasalia growing up in the Soviet Union? The “Simpsons” team had decided to cut it, but Mr. Gvasalia asked for it to be reinstated.He also asked, the day before the show, to change the color of a tear Ms. Wintour sheds while watching Marge model. The tear was too light, and it wouldn’t read onscreen unless it was a darker blue. Mr. Jean and the director David Silverman agreed.“They were definitely our match in terms of, to the last detail, making sure everything is perfect,” Mr. Jean said. “The animation crew, this is the hardest thing they’ve had to do since ‘The Simpsons Movie.’”Maggie and Lisa in Balenciaga crushed velvet jersey gowns from the spring 2021 collection.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationBart in a Balenciaga look from winter 2020, including a Wifi vintage jersey XL T-shirt and black leather Cuissard boots.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationMarge wearing a fictional Balenciaga dress in the “Simpsons” episode.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationSmithers in a one-shoulder pantadress from the winter 2020 collection.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationSherri and Terri wearing turtleneck dresses in bonded velvet from the summer 2020 collection.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationMr. Silverman, who directed that 2007 film, said the biggest challenge was getting the “accuracy needed in the clothing,” which involved inventive post-animation effects to capture the distinct textures and movement of, for example, Marge’s runway look: a gold metallic ball gown.Balenciaga sent the “Simpsons” team 15 looks to choose from for the final show, all based on designs from the last five years. But putting them on the bodies of these universally recognizable cartoon characters wasn’t so straightforward.“It was tricky for us, capturing that balance of caricature and the integrity of the clothing,” Mr. Silverman said. “You’re translating the look of real clothing, real designs on these characters that aren’t exactly human proportions.”Mr. Silverman, who joked-but-not-really that this is how he spent his summer vacation, studied runway footage to figure out what the audience should be wearing and how the lighting should be hitting the catwalk.The script also had to capture the particular absurdity of the luxury fashion world and Balenciaga’s stature in that world — something that can’t be absorbed on Wikipedia. Mr. Jean said that in addition to the crash course in Balenciaga earlier in the year, watching the Netflix series about Halston, who was a great fan of Balenciaga, helped him understand the evergreen excessive culture of fashion.The supporting characters are also based on real people and animals, including Mr. Gvasalia’s husband, Loïk Gomez; their two dogs; the chief creative officer, Martina Tiefenthaler (who voiced herself); and workers from Balenciaga’s atelier who are finishing the collection on the plane while singing, “formidable, formidable.”Selma wearing a 3D double-breasted coat and a stretch velvet top from the winter 2018 collection.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationPatty in a swing doudoune from Demna Gvasalia’s fall 2016 debut collection.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationThis is one of Mr. Gvasalia’s favorite scenes in the episode, he said: “It just makes me so happy every time I watch it.”As for Mr. Gvasalia’s voice, “we had to try to talk him into playing himself, but he didn’t want to,” Mr. Jean said. He felt that was consistent with Mr. Gvasalia’s recent decision to fully obscure his face and body during public appearances, creating confusion among observers as to whether it was really him.When asked why he wanted to align Balenciaga with “The Simpsons” and whether he felt the brands had any commonalities, Mr. Gvasalia said that “it’s more personal to me.”“I did not want to align anything or make sense of anything. I just wanted to create an iconic visual story.”While the novelty of the collaboration made it feel surprising, the brands share a similar ethos. They have an appreciation for self-referentiality, breaking the rules of presentation (airing an episode with live animation; turning a red carpet into a runway show without telling anyone) and bridging the highbrow and lowbrow. Mr. Jean called Mr. Gvasalia an “excellent collaborator,” and Mr. Gvasalia described the experience as “the highest level of collaboration” and “a dream come true.”“I did not realize how complex it is to create a 10-minute-long episode, so huge respect to that,” he said.Whether the act was meant to challenge fashion’s self-seriousness or the public’s notions of luxury — to bring Balenciaga to the suburban masses or to bring the suburban masses to Balenciaga — is something he will let the critics debate.What did he want out of this? “A smile and a good dose of fun.” More

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      in Theater

      Young Women Set the Tone for a Paris Theater Season

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      The directors staging the most ambitious premieres are all female millennials.PARIS — In March last year, Pauline Bayle’s “Lost Illusions” closed after just two performances, the day before France’s first coronavirus lockdown came into force. Eighteen months later, the Théâtre de la Bastille was chock-full once more for the production’s return to the stage — and the mood in Paris appeared to have finally lifted.Sure, proof of full vaccination or a recent negative test is required at the door, and masks remain mandatory in theaters. But the fear of shutdowns has receded along with the infection rate in the country, now that 75 percent of the population has received at least one dose of vaccine. Nearly all the country’s playhouses have reopened, with hopes now high for a “normal” season.And the directors setting the tone with ambitious premieres this September have all been millennial women. Like Bayle, Pauline Bureau, currently at the Théâtre de la Colline with “Surrogate” (“Pour Autrui”), and Maëlle Poésy, who just made her debut at the Comédie-Française, were on the cusp of national prominence when the pandemic hit.It is a relief to see them back. For emerging artists, the risk of running down funding or losing key opportunities has been especially acute over the past 18 months. The odds for women are arguably even tougher: Earlier this year, a World Economic Forum report suggested that the pandemic would delay gender equality by a generation. In France, an open letter published in the newspaper Libération last March pointed out the continued dearth of female leaders in the country’s arts world.The talent is there to change the narrative, and these millennial directors are maturing. While Bayle, Bureau and Poésy are far from alike, they all shun the highly conceptual approach that is often confused in France for a strong directorial voice. Instead, “Lost Illusions,” “Surrogate” and Poésy’s “7 Minutes” are all examples of confident, clear storytelling, complete with a few twists.“Lost Illusions” is in many ways a follow-up to Bayle’s Homer-inspired “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” two shows that toured widely in France from 2017 to 2020. Once again, Bayle has adapted an epic, character-heavy tale — Honoré de Balzac’s novel of the same name, published in installments between 1837 and 1843 — with just five actors on a bare stage. Four of them play multiple characters, men and women; the fifth, Jenna Thiam, takes the gender-swapped role of Lucien, an ambitious young writer from Angoulême who strives to make it in Parisian society.Significant cuts have been required to keep “Lost Illusions” under the two-and-a-half-hour mark. Still, Bayle and her cast manage to clearly delineate no fewer than 17 characters, sometimes with seconds to change costumes and transition from one to the next.Marie Nicolle and Nicolas Chupin in Pauline Bureau’s “Surrogate” at the Théâtre de la Colline.Christophe Raynaud de LageWhile Bayle relies on the audience’s imagination to fill in some gaps, Bureau’s instincts are closer to documentary theater. In 2019, she tackled the legalization of abortion in France in the 1970s for the Comédie-Française, in a play that drew on real-life events; “Surrogate,” at La Colline, returns to the theme of women’s reproductive rights through fiction.While legal in many countries and in some U.S. states, surrogacy remains forbidden by French law, regardless of the parents’ circumstances. “Surrogate,” which Bureau wrote and directed, openly acts as an advocate for change by telling the story of a heterosexual couple who can’t conceive after the prospective mother was treated for cancer.It’s a tricky proposition for a play, because creating characters in service of a clear cause can leave them feeling one-dimensional. When we meet Liz (Marie Nicolle), a construction manager, and Alexandre (Nicolas Chupin), a puppeteer, it soon becomes obvious — if only because of the play’s title — that they will fall in love and struggle to have a child. Yet in a neat, fast-paced series of vignettes, Bureau manages to introduce them both and stage a believable meet-cute at an airport. Their budding love story is told through intimate text messages flashed over the elaborate two-tier set.Some shortcuts are more frustrating. After Liz undergoes a hysterectomy, the play nudges them quickly toward surrogacy. Liz’s sister just happens to work at an American maternity hospital, and to have a colleague who dreams of becoming a surrogate. The staggering cost — over $100,000 — is mentioned only in passing, along with the vague prospect of a loan.Yet Bureau is brilliantly imaginative when it comes to revealing character in small, concise touches. As the American surrogate Rose, who seems too perfect on paper, she cast Maria Mc Clurg, a trained dancer who luxuriates in languid, expansive steps while heavily pregnant, as Liz watches, still — an eloquent metaphor for the relish Rose says she experiences when carrying a child, as well as Liz’s frustration with her own body.As Liz’s mother, Martine Chevallier is another highlight, insensitively deadpan, even as her daughter struggles. The only major mishap in “Surrogate” is the final scene, which sees Liz and Alexandre’s daughter appear as a teenager. Her studied weirdness, as well as repeated allusions to her high intellectual potential, undermine the rest of the play: Wouldn’t an average child be a gift, too, after infertility?The cast of “7 Minutes,” directed by Maëlle Poésy.Vincent Pontet/Comédie-FrançaiseNotably, both Bayle and Bureau benefited from commissions from the venerable Comédie-Française in 2019. Under its current director, Éric Ruf, the storied company has implemented a roughly equal split between female and male directors every season. This year, the two productions that opened the season were staged by women.After directing a Chekhov double bill for the troupe in 2016, Poésy returned with “7 Minutes,” a play by the Italian author Stefano Massini. It is set in a French textile factory, whose workers fear for their jobs after a change of ownership. Instead, the new management makes them a surprising offer: Eleven women elected to represent their peers are asked to voluntarily give up seven minutes out of the workforce’s daily 15-minute breaks.“7 Minutes” works like a courtroom drama. The characters have 80 minutes to decide whether or not to accept the proposal, and never leave the stage. While it initially seems like a no-brainer — seven minutes, they reason, is nothing compared with layoffs in a declining sector — one dissenting voice, that of Véronique Vella, raises the possibility that it is the first step in a rollback of hard-earned rights. As blue-collar jobs disappear, she asks with understated defiance, should those who remain accept worse working conditions just to remain employed?The play makes a superb addition to the Comédie-Française repertoire, which isn’t exactly replete with working-class stories, and brings every generation of the company together, from the company’s doyenne, Claude Mathieu, to Ruf’s latest hire, Séphora Pondi, 29.From left, Gaël Kamilindi, Sylvia Bergé, Gilles David, Claïna Clavaron and Birane Ba in Rose Martine’s “Hansel and Gretel” at the Comédie-Française.Vincent Pontet/Comédie-FrançaiseAnd there are already new names in the wings. “Hansel and Gretel,” a family-friendly production on the Comédie-Française’s smallest stage, the Studio-Théâtre, introduces Rose Martine, a 27-year-old director born in Haiti and raised in the overseas department of French Guiana.“Hansel and Gretel” lacks a little finesse in the acting choices, yet it’s a joy to see Martine bring elements of Black culture to the Comédie-Française stage, including call-and-response interactions with the audience borrowed from Haitian folk tales. Hansel, Gretel and the narrator are all played by young Black members of the company, with Birane Ba especially convincing as Hansel. Postpandemic, the future looks bright.Lost Illusions. Directed by Pauline Bayle. Théâtre de la Bastille, through Oct. 16.Surrogate. Directed by Pauline Bureau. Théâtre de la Colline, through Oct. 17.7 Minutes. Directed by Maëlle Poésy. Comédie-Française, through Oct. 17.Hansel & Gretel. Directed by Rose Martine. Comédie-Française, through Oct. 24. More

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      in Music

      Avec 'Oedipe', Wajdi Mouawad sonde les fractures du passé

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      Pour sa mise en scène l’opéra de Georges Enescu, le libano-canadien Wajdi Mouawad sonde les traumatismes de la compagnie — et les siens. “Quand on est soi-même complètement fracturé, on construit”.The New York Times traduit en français une sélection de ses meilleurs articles. Retrouvez-les ici.PARIS — Peu avant le début des répétitions pour sa mise en scène de l’“Œdipe” d’Enesco à l’Opéra de Paris, Wajdi Mouawad a une idée qui s’avère insolite. Il rédige un lexique de toutes les références obscures du livret — comme “l’eau de Castalie”, une source sacrée de Delphes — et l’envoie au chœur.Wajdi Mouawad, qui a 52 ans et dirige le Théâtre national de la Colline à Paris, est alors stupéfait d’apprendre que c’est la première fois que les choristes reçoivent un tel document. Quand il rencontre les techniciens de l’Opéra pour leur expliquer l’histoire de cet “Œdipe”, une curiosité composée dans les années 30 qui s’inspire du mythe grec, leur réaction est la même, se souvient-il dans un entretien: les metteurs en scène prennent rarement la peine de leur accorder beaucoup d’attention.“C’est étrange, parce qu’on me dit : ‘c’est formidable, tu dis bonjour’, ” confirme-t-il. “J’ai l’impression d’arriver dans un monde traumatisé qui maintenant trouve que son traumatisme est la normalité.”Traumatisme : le mot pourrait résumer ces dernières années à l’Opéra de Paris,volontiers frondeur. Fin 2019 et début 2020, les grèves provoquées par la perspective d’une réforme des retraites ont creusé un déficit de 45 millions d’euros, sur un budget de près de 230 millions d’euros. Et encore, c’était avant que la pandémie n’oblige à annuler plus d’une année de productions. (Des spectacles ont eu lieu en septembre et en octobre de l’année dernière, mais la compagnie a dû attendre fin mai pour reprendre sa programmation régulière.)L’“Œdipe” qui débute lundi à l’Opéra Bastille, la plus vaste scène de la compagnie, inaugure une nouvelle ère. Il s’agit de la première production commandée par Alexander Neef, le nouveau directeur général de l’Opéra de Paris nommé il y a un an.Le choix de Wajdi Mouawad ne doit rien au hasard. Avant d’arriver à Paris, Neef a dirigeait la Compagnie nationale d’opéra de Toronto où il a co-produit les premiers pas de Mouawad dans l’univers de l’opéra. C’était “L’Enlèvement au sérail” de Mozart, en 2016, qu’Alexander Neef qualifie d’ “une des expériences les plus gratifiantes que j’aie connue avec un metteur en scène.”“Sa force en tant qu’artiste, c’est qu’il a vraiment à cœur de travailler avec les gens,” explique Alexander Neef lors d’un entretien dans son bureau. “Avec “Œdipe”, j’espérais qu’il arrive à ressouder la compagnie. Il faut presque lui demander de ne pas être trop gentil.”Le retour d’ “Œdipe” sur la scène parisienne s’est fait attendre. Unique opéra de Georges Enesco, l’œuvre a été créée en 1936 au Palais Garnier. Elle n’a jamais été reprise à l’Opéra de Paris depuis cette date, alors que d’autres compagnies d’opéra s’y sont récemment intéressées. La première production nord-américaine a eu lieu en 2005 à l’université d’Illinois. En Europe, Achim Freyer a offert une mise en scène applaudie au Festival de Salzbourg il y a deux ans, sous la baguette d’Ingo Metzmacher que l’on retrouve à Paris.Wajdi Mouawad, au centre, lors d’une répétition d’ “Oedipe” à l’Opéra de Paris.Eléna Bauer/Opéra national de ParisPlus que la qualité de l’oeuvre, Alexander Neef pense que ce sont les accidents de l’histoire qui expliquent le manque d’intérêt pour cet “Œdipe” en dépit de critiques élogieuses au moment de sa création. En 1936, le New York Times rapportait les propos du compositeur et critique français Reynaldo Hahn évoquant une œuvre “grandiose, élevée, minutieusement élaborée, toujours imposante et qui force l’admiration.”“Après 1945, sa musique est passée de mode,” avance Alexander Neef à propos de la partition d’Enesco. “Pour beaucoup de compositeurs après l’Holocauste, la musique tonale n’avait plus lieu d’être.”Quand Alexandre Neef lui a proposé le projet, Wajdi Mouawad s’est avant tout intéressé au livret. Le metteur en scène a beaucoup fréquenté la légende d’Œdipe: en trente ans de carrière, il a monté l’ “Œdipe roi” de Sophocle trois fois. Et en 2016, il a même écrit une pièce intitulée “Les Larmes d’Œdipe”, qui relie la tragédie à la situation politique actuelle de la Grèce.Edmond Fleg, le librettiste d’ “Œdipe”, a largement puisé dans “Œdipe roi” et “Œdipe à Colonne”, du même Sophocle, pour les troisième et quatrième actes de l’opéra. (Le premier et le deuxième explicitent le contexte de la pièce.) “C’est un peu résumé, mais ce sont les mêmes répliques,” confirme Wajdi Mouawad. “Je me suis dit que j’avais de la place pour raconter cette histoire.”Composer des histoires est une priorité de toujours pour Wajdi Mouawad, qui est né au Liban en 1968. Sa famille a fui la guerre civile quand il avait dix ans, s’installant d’abord en France puis au Québec.“Quand j’essayais de comprendre la guerre du Liban, soit on me disait qu’il n’y avait rien à comprendre, soit on me disait : ‘c’est à cause des autres’,” se souvient-il. “Je manque tellement de récits.”Après une formation d’acteur à l’École nationale de théâtre du Canada à Montréal, Wajdi Mouawad se fait remarquer avec une tétralogie épique intitulée “Le Sang des promesses”, qui fait le tour du monde. Composée de quatre volets, “Littoral” (1999), “Incendies” (2003), “Forêts” (2006) et “Ciels” (2009), la pièce joue sur les thèmes du traumatisme intergénérationnel, de la guerre et de l’exil.Son travail a fait découvrir le théâtre contemporain à nombre de milléniaux francophones. À son retour à Paris en 2016, à la direction du théâtre de la Colline, Wajdi Mouawad se démarque du goût européen actuel pour les productions non linéaires et très conceptuelles. Lisa Perrio, une actrice qui a travaillé plusieurs fois sous sa direction, le confirme : “Il aime le dramatique, le pathos, et ça marche.”“C’est la chose la plus dure de ma vie que j’aie eu à jouer,” ajoute-t-elle, “parce que ça te demande tellement d’émotion.”Pour Wajdi Mouawad, le postmodernisme est un luxe incompatibe avec certains traumatismes. “Je suis le post-modernisme,” dit-il. “La guerre du Liban, il n’y a pas plus post-moderne. La déconstruction, c’est un truc de riches. Quand tout va bien, on déconstruit. Quand on n’a pas les moyens – quand on est soi-même complètement fracturé – on construit.”“Quand tout va bien, on déconstruit,” dit Wajdi Mouawad. “Quand on n’a pas les moyens – quand on est soi-même complètement fracturé – on construit.”Julien Mignot pour The New York TimesEn mars, un an après le début des perturbations causées par la pandémie, la Colline est un des premiers théâtres français à être occupé par des manifestants. Les étudiants et les travailleurs de la culture exigeaient le soutien du gouvernement et le retrait de la réforme de l’assurance-chômage. Très vite, le mouvement s’est étendu à plus de cent théâtres.Contacté par téléphone, Sébastien Kheroufi, un des premiers élèves-comédiens à s’être installé à la Colline, dit que Wajdi Mouawad est un des rares metteurs en scène de renom à avoir réservé un accueil chaleureux aux occupants . “Un soir, il n’a pas hésité à rester avec nous plusieurs heures après ses répétitions parce qu’on avait besoin de parler,” se souvient-il.La levée de l’occupation fin mai reste toutefois une source de frustration pour Wajdi Mouawad. Avec son équipe, il a proposé aux étudiants de rester pour la réouverture et de prendre la parole avant les spectacles. Wajdi Mouawad espérait aussi créer une troupe permanente de jeunes comédiens à qui il offrirait des contrats à l’année.Christopher Maltman, center, in a rehearsal of “Oedipe” at the Paris Opera.Elisa Haberer/Opéra national de ParisIls ont fini par refuser “parce que l’idée venait de nous et qu’ils ne voulaient rien nous devoir,” juge-t-il aujourd’hui. Un coup dur pour cet homme qui a horreur de la hiérarchie et n’a pas hésité à rédiger une lettre ouverte dépitée dans laquelle il revient sur l’ “échec” de toutes les parties engagées dans l’occupation.Puis, début septembre, au beau milieu des répétitions d’ “Œdipe”, François Ismert, son dramaturge de longue date, est décédé. “C’était vraiment quelqu’un de solaire, d’atypique,” dit ce dernier. Ismert l’avait ouvert à Sophocle dans les années 1990, “et pas que”, se souvient-il. “À tout le reste, sans jamais être dans un rapport paternaliste.”À l’approche de la première, cette disparition continue de se faire sentir. Mais le metteur en scène tâche de donner un sens au chaos.“Je sais que tout est en ruines,” soupire-t-il avant de rejoindre le studio de répétition. “Mais il faut bien en faire quelque chose, de ces ruines.” More

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      in Music

      With a Rare ‘Oedipe,’ the Paris Opera Pulls Together

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      Staged by the playwright and director Wajdi Mouawad, Enescu’s opera helps inaugurate a new era for the storied company.PARIS — Ahead of rehearsals for his staging of George Enescu’s “Oedipe” at the Paris Opera, the playwright and director Wajdi Mouawad did something unusual. He put together a glossary of all the obscure references in the libretto — like “the water of Castalia,” a sacred spring in Delphi — and sent it to the chorus.Mouawad, 52, who runs the Théâtre National de la Colline in Paris, was taken aback to find the choristers had never received anything like it. When he approached the company’s technical crew to explain to them the story of “Oedipe,” a rarity from the 1930s based on the Greek myth, their reaction was similar, he said in an interview — few directors ever bothered to pay them much mind.“It’s odd, because I hear, ‘It’s wonderful, you say hello,”” Mouawad added. “I feel like I’m stepping into a traumatized world that now believes its trauma is the norm.”Trauma is not a bad way of describing the past few years at the fractious Paris Opera. In late 2019 and early 2020, labor strikes over a pension policy overhaul resulted in a 45 million euro deficit in a budget hovering around 230 million euros. And that was before the pandemic forced the cancellation of over a year’s worth of performances. (While some performances took place in September and October last year, the company didn’t resume its regular schedule until late May.)So “Oedipe,” which opens at the Opera Bastille, the company’s larger theater, on Monday, may just inaugurate a new era. It is the first production that was commissioned by Alexander Neef, who took over as the Opera’s general director last year.It is no coincidence that he turned to Mouawad. In his last job, leading the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, Neef co-produced Mouawad’s first stab at opera, a 2016 production of Mozart’s “The Abduction From the Seraglio,” that Neef calls “one of the most satisfying experiences that I’ve ever had with a director.”“His strength as an artist is that he really wants to work with humans,” Neef added in an interview in his office. “With ‘Oedipe,’ my hope was that he would pull the whole company together. Sometimes, you almost need to encourage him not to be too nice.”The return of “Oedipe” to the Paris stage has been a long time coming. Enescu’s only opera, it had its premiere at the company’s smaller, ornate Palais Garnier in 1936, but has never been revived there, even as other opera houses took a belated interest in it. The North American premiere took place at the University of Illinois in 2005, while Achim Freyer directed an acclaimed staging at the Salzburg Festival two years ago, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher, who will return to the score in Paris.Mouawad, center, during a rehearsal for “Oedipe.”Eléna Bauer/Opéra national de ParisNeef believes the course of history, rather than quality, explains the long lack of appetite for “Oedipe,” which earned positive reviews upon its premiere. The New York Times reported in 1936 that the French composer and critic Reynaldo Hahn had described it as “imposing, lofty, minutely elaborated” and “always compelling admiration.”“After 1945, I think the music had fallen out of fashion,” Neef said of Enescu’s lush score. “For a lot of composers writing after the Holocaust, it couldn’t be tonal music anymore, for a long time.”When Neef first approached him, Mouawad was less concerned with the score than with the libretto. The legend of Oedipus was familiar to him: In his 30-year career, Mouawad has staged Sophocles’s “Oedipus the King” three times. In 2016, he also wrote a play, “The Tears of Oedipus,” that tied the character’s plight to modern Greek politics.The librettist of “Oedipe,” Edmond Fleg, closely based the third and fourth acts on “Oedipus the King” and another play by Sophocles, “Oedipus at Colonus.” (The first and second acts flesh out the plays’ background.) “It’s slightly summarized, but the dialogue is essentially the same,” Mouawad said. “I thought I would have space to tell this story.”Storytelling has long driven Mouawad, who was born in Lebanon in 1968. When he was 10, his family fled the civil war, moving first to France, then to French-speaking Quebec.“When I tried to understand the Lebanese civil war, I was either told that there was nothing to understand, or that it was the fault of others,” Mouawad said. “There was a gaping lack of stories in my life.”After training as an actor at the National Theater School in Montreal, Mouawad rose to prominence with an epic tetralogy, “The Blood of Promises,” that has been produced all over the world. Composed of “Littoral” (1999), “Scorched” (2003), “Forests” (2006) and “Skies” (2009), it delved into intergenerational trauma, war and displacement.His work has served as an introduction to contemporary theater for many French-speaking millennials. Even after he moved back to Paris in 2016 to direct the Théâtre de la Colline, Mouawad steered clear of the prevailing European taste for nonlinear, highly conceptual productions. Lisa Perrio, an actress who has worked with Mouawad several times in recent years, said that “he loves drama, pathos, and it works.”“When everything is fine, you deconstruct,” Mouawad said. “When you can’t afford it — when you yourself are completely fractured — you build.”Julien Mignot for The New York Times“His work is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to perform,” she added, “because it requires so much emotion.”To Mouawad, postmodernism is a luxury beyond the means of those who have experienced deep trauma. “I myself am postmodernism,” he said “There is nothing more postmodern than the Lebanese war. Deconstruction is a rich person’s thing. When everything is fine, you deconstruct. When you can’t afford it — when you yourself are completely fractured — you build.”In March, a year into the disruption caused by the pandemic, the Théâtre de la Colline was one of the first French theaters to be occupied by protesters. Students and arts workers demanded government support and the withdrawal of changes to unemployment benefits. The movement soon spread to over 100 playhouses.Sébastien Kheroufi, who was among the drama students who first entered La Colline, said in a phone interview that Mouawad was one of the few high-profile directors to extend the occupiers a warm welcome. “One night, he even stayed with us for several hours after his rehearsals because we needed to talk,” Kheroufi said.Yet the end of the occupation, in late May, left Mouawad frustrated. He and his team offered the students the opportunity to stay on for the reopening and speak before shows; Mouawad also hoped to start a permanent youth company, offering year-round contracts to young actors.Christopher Maltman, center, plays the title role in “Oedipe.”Elisa Haberer/Opéra national de ParisThey ultimately said no, Mouawad now speculates, “because the idea had come from us, and they didn’t want to owe us anything.” It was a blow for the hierarchy-averse Mouawad, who reflected on the “failure” of all parties of the occupation movement in a despondent open letter.Then, in early September, just as rehearsals for “Oedipe” were in full swing, Mouawad’s longtime dramaturg François Ismert passed away. “He was such a luminous, atypical person,” Mouawad said. Ismert had introduced him to Sophocles in the 1990s — “and not just that,” he said. “To everything else, without ever being paternalistic.”The loss loomed over the approaching premiere. Days before, though, Mouawad remained intent on sifting through the chaos.“I know everything is in ruins,” he said, before returning to the rehearsal room. “But we have to make something of those ruins.” More

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      in Movies

      Jean-Paul Belmondo, Magnetic Star of the French New Wave, Dies at 88

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      He was compared to Marlon Brando and James Dean for his acclaimed portrayals of tough, alienated characters, most memorably in Godard’s “Breathless.”Jean-Paul Belmondo, the rugged actor whose disdainful eyes, boxer’s nose, sensual lips and cynical outlook made him the idolized personification of youthful alienation in the French New Wave, most notably in his classic performance as an existential killer in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless,” died on Monday at his home in Paris. He was 88.His death was confirmed by the office of his lawyer, Michel Godest. No cause was given.Like Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando and James Dean — three American actors to whom he was frequently compared — Mr. Belmondo established his reputation playing tough, unsentimental, even antisocial characters who were cut adrift from bourgeois society. Later, as one of France’s leading stars, he took more crowd-pleasing roles, but without entirely surrendering his magnetic brashness.Like Bogart, Mr. Belmondo brought craggy features and sometimes seething anger to the screen, a realistic counterpoint to more conventionally handsome romantic stars. Like Dean, he became one of the most widely imitated pop culture figures of his era. And like Brando, he was often dismissive of pretentiousness and self-importance among filmmakers.“No actor since James Dean has inspired quite such intense identification,” Eugene Archer wrote in The New York Times in 1965. “Dean evoked the rebellious adolescent impulse, as fierce as it was gratuitous, a violent outgrowth of the frustrations of the modern world. Belmondo is a later manifestation of youthful rejection — and more disturbing. His disengagement from a society his parents made is total. He accepts corruption with a cynical smile, not even bothering to struggle. He is out entirely for himself, to get whatever he can, while he can. The Belmondo type is capable of anything.”His leading role in “À bout de souffle” — released in the United States in 1961 as “Breathless” — was instantly recognized as trendsetting; subsequent imitators only cemented its importance. Mr. Belmondo’s mop of unruly hair, the way he peered at the world through a twisting web of cigarette smoke, and the way he obsessively massaged his thick, feminine lips with his thumb were so vivid and evocative that they quickly became global signposts of rebellion.Mr. Belmondo in “Breathless.” His on-screen mannerisms became global signposts of rebellion.Films-Around-The -WorldMr. Belmondo was 28 and Mr. Godard was 26 when “Breathless” was being made. The film was based on an idea by François Truffaut, another icon of the nouvelle vague, and began shooting in Paris without a script. Mr. Godard used a hand-held camera — except in the street scenes, when he would sometimes mount the camera on a borrowed wheelchair — and let everyone improvise. The resulting film was rough and ill-shaped, but it had a sense of emotional honesty and verisimilitude that made it electric. Many mainstream critics seemed unsure what to make of it.Bosley Crowther wrote in The Times: “It goes at its unattractive subject in an eccentric photographed style that sharply conveys the nervous tempo and the emotional erraticalness of the story it tells. And through the American actress, Jean Seberg, and a hypnotically ugly new young man by the name of Jean-Paul Belmondo, it projects two downright fearsome characters.”Many critics found Mr. Belmondo’s amoral antihero a little too strong. But others found in the role a raw truthfulness and a thematic boldness at odds with the bulk of what was coming out of Hollywood studios.Restless and a Little BoredMr. Belmondo followed up “Breathless” with a series of celebrated turns for other New Wave directors and was soon widely seen as the movement’s leading interpreter — although in later years he told interviewers that some of the most intellectually ambitious efforts he had been involved in had bored him.When he starred as a steelworker opposite Jeanne Moreau in Peter Brooks’ “Moderato Cantabile” (1960), he said the script, by the French novelist Marguerite Duras, was too intellectual for his taste. He frequently expressed ambivalence about working for esoteric directors like Mr. Brooks, Alain Resnais and Michelangelo Antonioni.In other roles Mr. Belmondo was a Hungarian who gets romantically involved with a Provençal family in Claude Chabrol’s “À double tour” (1959) and a young country priest in “Leon Morin, Priest” (1962). He also helped his co-star, Sophia Loren, win an Academy Award in Vittorio De Sica’s “Two Women” (1961), a drama set during World War II in which he played a young Communist intellectual in mountainous central Italy.By the mid ’60s, though, he was chafing at playing the young antihero in film after film.“Lots of times, I’d be out with a chick and some kid would want to give me a bad time,” Mr. Belmondo told an interviewer. “I used to fight it out with them. It’s the same now. Everyone wants to say he’s flattened Belmondo.”The turning point for him came in Philippe De Broca’s “That Man From Rio,” a 1964 over-the-top spy thriller that played like a parody of James Bond. Audiences loved it, and they loved Mr. Belmondo in it. More important, Mr. Belmondo loved doing it. Although some critics who revered the more difficult work of the French New Wave derided Mr. Belmondo as a sell out, he told interviewers that this film remained his favorite.Mr. Belmondo in “That Man From Rio” (1964), an over-the-top spy thriller. It was a turning point for the actor, who had begun chafing at being typecast as a young antihero.Cohen Media GroupLater in his career Mr. Belmondo professed an unpretentious modesty, shrugging off his success, but at his box-office height in the 1960s, he was anything but modest. In an interview with the film critic Rex Reed in 1966, he all but sneered at American fans who were lining up to see his movies.“I do not blame them,” he said, puffing on a cigar and stretching out his long legs underneath a table at Harry’s Bar in Venice. “I am worth standing in line to see.”By this time there were rumors that despite having been married since 1955 to Elodie Constantin, a former ballerina, Mr. Belmondo was involved with other women. When Mr. Reed asked him about this, he shrugged that off, too.“Listen, I am only 32 years old,” he said. “I’m not dead. And please remember, I am French. I am happily married this year, but next year? Who knows?”A year later the marriage had ended in divorce. Mr. Belmondo had three children with Ms. Constantin. The eldest, Patricia, died in a fire in 1994, but their younger daughter, Florence, and a son, Paul, survive him.The divorce was rumored to have resulted from a romance by Mr. Belmondo with one of his co-stars, Ursula Andress. He and Ms. Andress did have a long-term public relationship after the divorce. He was later romantically involved with another actress, Laura Antonelli. But not until 2002, when he was 70 years old, did he marry again, to 24-year-old Nathalie Tardivel. That marriage ended in divorce six years later. They had a daughter, Stella, who also survives him.A Left Bank BoyhoodJean-Paul Belmondo was born on April 9, 1933, in the middle-class Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. His family moved to the city’s Left Bank when he was a boy, and he grew up in the neighborhoods around Montparnasse and Saint-Germain-des-Prés. His father, Paul Belmondo, who was born in Algiers to a family of Italian origin, was a highly regarded sculptor. He later told interviewers that his son had been a tempestuous boy who had gotten into frequent scraps and did poorly in school.The boy’s mother, Madeline Rainaud-Richard, pushed him to do better, but he resisted, Mr. Belmondo later recalled. Finally, he dropped out of school altogether as a teenager. At 16, he became an enthusiastic amateur boxer (although his famous smashed nose came not from an organized bout but from a playground dust-up), giving it up only when he turned to acting.“I stopped when the face I saw in the mirror began to change,” he said.For several years, until he was 20, his parents paid for acting lessons at a private conservatory. After a six-month military tour in Algeria, he returned to Paris in 1953 and was accepted into the Conservatoire National d’Art Dramatique, where he studied for three years. The school, a conservative one, didn’t know what to do with the insolent young man who sauntered onto the stage in a Molière play with his hands in his pockets.When, at his graduation, in 1956, Mr. Belmondo was awarded only an honorable mention by his teachers, the other students hoisted him on their shoulders and carried him from the theater as he flashed an obscene gesture at the judges.Mr. Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve in François Truffaut’s 1969 movie “Mississippi Mermaid.” Film DeskFor all his flamboyance and occasional fistfights, Mr. Belmondo was said to be a consummate professional on the set. Although in later years he continued to work now and then with the great directors of the New Wave — most notably with Truffaut in “Mississippi Mermaid” (1969) — most of his energies went into mainstream favorites. Many of his films after the mid-1960s were made by his own production company.More and more Mr. Belmondo became known for popular adventures, usually comic thrillers. And he became famous for elaborate stunts in which he took great pride in performing himself. He hung from skyscrapers, leapt across speeding trains, drove cars off hillsides. Co-stars said he seemed all but fearless. While shooting one scene in South America, he was warned that a river, into which he was about to plunge for a scene, was filled with poisonous snakes and piranha. Mr. Belmondo grabbed a chunk of corned beef and slung it into the murky water. When nothing happened, he jumped in and filmed the scene.He said he had decided, “What the hell, if they’re not going to chew on that, they’re not going to eat me.”Finally, an injury during the filming of “Hold-Up” in 1985, when he was 52, forced him to leave the stunts to the stunt men.Hollywood Was Not for HimThroughout, the Belmondo cult endured, though more in France than around the world. His French fans knew him by his nickname, Bebel (pronounced bay-BELL).No matter the scene, no matter the co-stars, whatever mayhem was breaking out onscreen, Mr. Belmondo was always able to affect a calm, cool remove, as though he was more amused than aroused by the activity swirling around him. He brought a touch of comedy to his action roles and a hint of danger to his comic roles; one could well imagine him playing the reluctant, wisecracking hero in American action series of the 1980s like “Die Hard.”Mr. Belmondo never made the transition to Hollywood, largely because he didn’t want to. “Why complicate my life?” he said. “I am too stupid to learn the language and it would only be a disaster.”Mr. Belmondo in 2007. By choice he never made the transition to Hollywood. Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 1989 he was awarded the Cesar Award for best actor, the French equivalent of the Oscar, for his performance in Claude Lelouch’s “Itineraire d’un enfant gate,” playing a middle-aged industrialist who fakes his death and then sails the world.By this time he had slowed his frenetic pace, making only nine movies in the 1980s, compared to 41 in 1960s and 16 in the 1970s. He cut back even more in the ’90s, when he made only six films, but this was due in part to a belated career shift. Mr. Belmondo had not appeared in a live production since 1959 when he returned to the theater in 1987. Particularly well-regarded was his sold-out run as “Cyrano de Bergerac” in Paris in 1990.A stroke in 2001, however, forced him to stop working. Not until eight years later was be back before the cameras, shooting “Un homme et son chien” (“A Man and His Dog).” Released in 2009, it tells the story of an older gentleman who, accompanied by his loyal dog, suddenly finds himself without a home.Late in life, when he was a little thicker and much grayer, Mr. Belmondo liked to affect some of the self-effacing modesty that was noticeably absent when he was at his peak in the 1960s.When an interviewers asked him to explain his enduring popularity, especially with women, Mr. Belmondo responded with his usual casual shrug.“Hell, everyone knows that an ugly guy with a good line gets the chicks,” he said.Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting. More

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      in Theater

      In Paris, Brexit Takes to the Stage

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      “Exit,” a new musical production, uses the political drama both as a metaphor and as a backdrop for a cross-continental love triangle.PARIS — Brexit, Britain’s protracted disentanglement from the European Union, was always bound to appear onstage. It didn’t take long for productions to reference it in London or in Edinburgh. With “Exit,” a new show at the Théâtre de la Huchette here, the political drama has now reached French theaters — in the form of an effervescent mini-musical.There are sung poll numbers, trips across the English Channel, and plenty of French and British stereotypes. Yet “Exit,” which was co-written by Stéphane Laporte and Gaétan Borg, doesn’t dwell on politics. Instead, Brexit provides a backdrop and a metaphor for the play’s cross-border love triangle and journey of self-discovery.It is a mighty premiere for a tiny theater. The Théâtre de la Huchette boasts only 85 seats, and because of Covid rules, it can currently be only 65 percent full. (The restriction is tentatively set to be lifted next week.) It is best known for its cult, long-running productions of two absurdist plays by Eugène Ionesco, “The Lesson” and “The Bald Soprano.” Both have run for over six decades, with the pandemic the longest interruption in the theater’s history.Since 1981, however, La Huchette has also presented a third production after its Ionesco double bill. There is a touch of absurdity to “Exit,” too, most notably in the story line that brings the three main characters together.All of them work in the video game industry. A French couple, Sybille and Antoine, co-founded a company called Anachronia, which makes intentionally dumb games like “Marie-Antoinette and the Danton Sheep” (in which the French queen is tasked with knocking off sheep) and “Marie Curie Super Radium,” with the famed scientist fighting the Nazis.Then, when Sybille goes looking for a designer for a new project, she finds Mark, an aloof, sarcastic Englishman. The twists and turns designed to bring them together are hardly subtle. Sybille’s enthusiastic yet half-baked pitch would be unlikely to convince a seasoned professional, yet that’s where “Exit” really shines.Pangos and Savary in “Exit.” Her character is French. His is English.Fabienne RappeneauEach game gets old-fashioned, two-dimensional credits on a screen above the cast, and the actors don campy wigs and costumes to demonstrate it, complete with musical numbers. “Trouba-Dance,” Sybille’s Eleanor of Aquitaine-inspired dance game, is an especially uproarious example, and Harold Savary (Mark) brings deadpan game character impressions to the table.The story is set in the run-up to the Brexit vote in 2016, but the political context is mostly mentioned in passing, as a way to signal how much time has passed as well as the cultural differences between Sybille’s French and British suitors. It does make for a few entertaining scenes, as when Antoine and Mark square off with mutual insults and each concludes that the other’s culture remains his “favorite monster.”Laporte and Borg’s songs, with music by Didier Bailly, are less consistent when it comes to character arcs. Antoine (played by the endearing Simon Heulle, a bright presence) is initially depicted as a goofy nerd, but his insistence that Anachronia must produce only inane games — the company’s tagline at one point is described as “Anachronia: 100 percent laziness” — grows somewhat ludicrous.Mark’s character is also seemingly bent to accommodate the plot. Near the end, after he and Sibylle admit their love for each other, he swiftly becomes controlling — a trait that isn’t really foreshadowed. “I just want to be your savior,” he tells Sibylle.The goal is clearly to set up the denouement, Sibylle’s decision to be “alone, standing and without fear,” as the final song puts it. This conclusion is meant to be uplifting, but given the all-male writing and directing team, it feels dictated by empowerment as a generic goal, rather than arriving organically. It’s not exactly a feminist statement for a female character to find self-revelation through a man, only for him to become a pantomime villain, thus justifying a solo ending.That’s a shame, because Marina Pangos carries much of “Exit” with her assured, vivacious performance as Sibylle, down to her interactions with the audience. Every time the character is on the Eurostar, she sits in La Huchette’s tiny auditorium, which stands in for a train car, and addresses audience members as fellow passengers, all with superb comic timing.Leïla Anis in her play “The Monstrous Ones” at the Théâtre Gérard Philipe.Xavier CantatWhile “Exit” was part of the wave of premieres after theaters were allowed to reopen in France last month, other productions are returning to a second life onstage. “The Monstrous Ones” (“Les Monstrueuses”), a play Leïla Anis first published in 2017, found an audience even while theaters were closed. Between January and March, Anis took it to high schools, where artists were allowed to perform.It was revived at the Théâtre Gérard Philipe in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis this month, and it is an eye-catching achievement. Anis performs the lead role and plays four different characters, all women from different generations within the same family, linked by difficult experiences of motherhood.Ella, the sole 21st-century character, learns at the start that she is pregnant and, after losing consciousness, finds herself in a psychiatric hospital, grappling with family memories. She becomes Jeanne, her great-grandmother, who loses her daughter Rosa after divorce; Rosa, who undergoes an illegal abortion; and Zeïna, from another side of the family, who hemorrhages during the delivery of her son in Yemen.There is at times too much back story packed into this one-hour show, to the point that Ella’s growth as a character remains limited. But Anis, who was named an associate playwright with the Théâtre Gérard Philipe in 2020, paints a vivid, often poetic picture of the women’s shared trauma, both in her writing and onstage.Her ability to physically transform from scene to scene — one minute a nearly feral presence with hair over her face, the next a shy young mother-to-be — is a rare gift, and the director of “The Monstrous Ones,” her frequent collaborator Karim Hammiche, makes way for her to explore it freely.Hammiche joins her onstage for a few scenes, as Ella’s doctor during her hospital stay, but this is very much Anis’s show. For French high school students, it offered an opportunity to explore a darker, rarely discussed side of being a mother. Now, at long last, productions like “The Monstrous Ones” are playing in theaters again.Exit. Directed by Patrick Alluin. Théâtre de la Huchette, through Aug. 28.The Monstrous Ones. Directed by Karim Hammiche. Théâtre Gérard Philipe. Further performances to be announced. More