Author: THE HOBBLEDEHOY

Michael Stevenson, aka Dai Bando, Johnny Foreigner, Monsieur Pas De Merde, is a blogger of French and British culture. His blogs "Pas De Merde" and "The Hobbledehoy" have been called "marvelous" by some, and "meh" by others.

France’s lockdown vice? Cheese

French households feasted on cheese last year as they turned to home cooking and sought gastronomic comfort during coronavirus lockdowns that shuttered the restaurant trade.

By Lucien Libert

The amount of cheese purchased by French shoppers for at-home consumption increased by more than 8% in 2020, compared with just 2% the previous year, according to figures from farming agency FranceAgriMer and market data firm Kantar.

That was part of a shift in food consumption in many countries last year as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, with households initially bulk buying staples like pasta and flour, and later settling into home-eating habits with extra purchases of products like butter.

In France, mozzarella saw the steepest rise in demand among major cheese categories, with a 21% volume jump, followed by a 12% increase for raclette – a winter favourite eaten melted with potatoes and cured meats. Continue reading “France’s lockdown vice? Cheese” →

France Bleu Live with Francis Cabrel

Despite the closure of theaters, Francis Cabrel takes the stage of the Maison de la Radio in Paris to offer us an unprecedented France Bleu Live. A salutary moment, in music and poetry, to experience on France Bleu.

Malgré la fermeture des salles de spectacle, Francis Cabrel monte sur la scène de la Maison de la Radio à Paris pour nous offrir un France Bleu Live inédit. Un moment salutaire, en musique et en poésie, à vivre sur France Bleu.

Source: EXCLUDED – France Bleu Live with Francis Cabrel

Film Review: My Donkey, My Lover & I

Antoinette, a school teacher, is looking forward to her long planned summer holidays with her secret lover Vladimir, one of her pupils’ father. When she learns that Vladimir cannot come because his wife organized a surprise trekking in the Cévennes National Park with their daughter and a donkey to carry their load, Antoinette decides to follow their track, by herself, with her own stubborn donkey.

A very beautiful film, both funny and touching, which makes you want to return to France and go hiking in the Cévennes and carrying in its suitcase “Travel with a donkey in the Cévennes” by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Antoinette, a Parisian schoolteacher, has an extra-marital relationship with Vladimir, the father of one of her students. The latter abandons him for the summer holidays to go hiking in the Cévennes with his wife and daughter. Neither one nor two, Antoinette also decides to make “the way of Stevenson” accompanied by Patrick, a recalcitrant donkey. If the beginnings are more than laborious, a beautiful relationship is established between the two protagonists and Patrick even comes to guide Antoinette in her love choices. Laure Calamy, always just as fair, finds the perfect tone and does not give in to cliché or caricature

Le Petit Journal

‘Madame Claude’: gritty Netflix take on Paris sex icon

She was a salacious icon of 20th century Paris — the brothel-keeper to the stars — and Netflix hopes the basis for another hit in the recent run of French successes.

In the 1960s and 1970s, “Madame Claude”, real name Fernande Grudet, had a client book that read like the guest list to a royal wedding: captains of industry, President John F Kennedy, Marlon Brando, the Shah of Iran…

There were enough secrets being divulged on her pillows to ensure protection from the authorities, as well as considerable interest from the secret services.

But in the latest telling, released on Netflix on April 2, the glamour in which her story was often shrouded is stripped away to show a darker reality.

“There is the image of Madame Claude: of Paris, beautiful dresses and big hotels, power… What interested me was what was happening behind the scenes,” director Sylvie Verheyde, 54, told AFP.

Behind the scenes were ties to organised crime, a life of emotional misery and a near-pathological lack of scruples: Madame Claude, it emphasises, always made sure to get her 30 percent, even when the girls returned bruised and bloodied from an encounter gone wrong.

“Madame Claude built her mythology. She was a great liar, a fraud who said she wanted to ‘beautify vice’, which meant brushing all the ugliness under the carpet,” said Verheyde.

– ‘This isn’t love’ –

The director knows this world well: a grandmother and cousin both worked as prostitutes, and she tackled the subject already in her 2016 film “Sex Doll”.

Continue reading “‘Madame Claude’: gritty Netflix take on Paris sex icon” →