How to eat like a French woman

Guilt-free two-hour lunches are standard in the south of France

Alix O’Neill is a freelance journalist and writer, who, after years of on-off scheming, has finally taken the plunge and moved to the South of France. In search of a simpler life, filled with more cheese and less stress, she charts her new chapter in the ‘rose city’ of Toulouse, with husband ‘Mr G’ and baby ‘Tibs’ in tow. You can read all about the highs and lows of settling into French culture here in her brand new column.

At my last antenatal appointment, the gynaecologist’s assistant told me I had a “beautiful uterus”. I’m as in awe of the female reproductive system as the next person, but it’s never occurred to me to compliment another woman on the pulchritude of her internal organs.

Of course, she wasn’t referring to the physical attractiveness of my womb. She was simply confirming that everything was healthy and progressing as it should be. I’m coming to learn that in French, anything has the potential to be beautiful, from an idea to cheese. The pursuit of beauty and its partner pleasure is a serious business here. As Lucy Wadham writes in her 2009 memoir The Secret Life of France, “Traits like rigour, reserve and resilience – qualities which, significantly, are usually attributed to France’s Protestant minority – are begrudgingly admired but never championed.”

Buying groceries becomes a thing of beauty

The French seek out small pleasures on a daily basis. Guilt-free two-hour lunches are standard, while I’ve seen locals enjoy a glass of wine at 10am before opening shop for the day. Even buying groceries can be a thing of beauty, if approached in the correct manner. When we were living in London, discounting weekends pottering around Borough or Broadway markets, most days I reluctantly joined the self-service queue of office workers clutching bags of ravioli and stir-in pasta sauce in my local Tesco. Beyond amusing myself by attempting to guess who would lose it at the next “unexpected item in bagging area”, it was invariably a soulless experience.

In Toulouse, picking up ingredients for dinner each evening is a joy. After coffee and croissants, Tibs and I will head to the market to stock up on fruit and veg, seeing what’s in season before deciding what to eat that day. We’ll head to the fromagerie and boulangerie, Tibs going native by demanding to tuck into warm baguette on the way home. (For non-perishable purchases, it’s Lidl. Even the French can’t make toilet paper sexy.)

The joys of simple cooking

In France, food and cooking is one of the greatest pleasures in life, and played a not inconsiderable part in our decision to move. Mr G is an excellent cook and I’ve always been a gourmand (not a gourmet. An important distinction. The latter knows a lot about food; the former is essentially a human waste disposal unit). Zola once said, “When there’s nothing good to eat for dinner, I’m unhappy – really unhappy. That’s all there is; nothing else exists for me.” I can relate. My friend Jude and I had a bad lunch on our sixth-form girls’ trip to Magaluf. I’m not sure what we were expecting from this well-known culinary hotspot, but the disappointment plagues us to this day. [ . . . ]

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Grub Guide: How To Celebrate Bastille Day 2019 in NYC

Nine distinctly français ways to observe French Independence Day.

Whether you love France for that nice assist in the Revolutionary War or because you simply love French food and culture, Bastille Day is when to show it. This weekend, New Yorkers are invited to partake in plenty of Stateside festivities, including pétanque tournaments, dance parties, food festivals, and even a French-themed wine-and-cheese tasting, all in honor of the 230th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. Here’s how to make the most of Bastille Day 2019 in New York City.

Eat your way through the city’s French restaurants
Starting today and going through July 21, New Yorkers are invited to grab some very affordable meals at the city’s many, many French restaurants. Dining options range from $18 for an amuse-bouche plus a drink up to a $190 prix fixe dinner for two with a bottle of wine. Participating restaurants include Petite Boucherie, St. Tropez Wine Bar, Bistrot Leo, and 18 other local eateries. Check out the whole list here.

Party like you’re in Provence — in Cobble Hill
Of all Brooklyn neighborhoods, Cobble Hill would seem to be le plus français. To wit: Bar Tabac’s yearly fête in observance of Bastille Day, featuring live music, food and wine, and a perennially hard-fought pétanque tournament. Festivities begin at 10 a.m. and last until sunset.

… Or on the Upper West Side
On Saturday, July 13, drop by Cafe du Soleil for a special menu featuring Provençal delights, live music, and a pétanque tournament with a $55 buy-in, which includes a bottle of rosé. So even if you lose, you win.

Drink you way through the day at Jacques Brasserie
Fun fact: On Bastille Day in France, fire stations throughout the country host some of the best parties. Unfortunately, the FDNY isn’t hip to the situation, so your next-best bet is to head to Jacques Brasserie on the Upper East Side for a boozy party featuring multiple renditions of “La Marseillaise,” merguez-and-harissa baguette sandwiches, brochette skewers, and three specialty cocktails: Lillet spritzes; the refreshing Jacques 75 with gin, cucumber, lime juice, and Champagne; and Bal des Pompiers with Ricard, Angostura bitters, simple syrup, club soda, and an orange slice.

Take in some French (and French diaspora) classical music in Van Cortlandt Park
What better way to spend Bastille Day than with a bottle of wine, some Brie, and an outdoor concert? On Sunday, the Bronx Arts Ensemble will host a small show in Van Cortlandt Park, featuring a performance of Maurice Ravel’s only string quartet (which some might recognize from the opening scenes of The Royal Tenenbaums) as well as a guitar composition by Haitian composer Frantz Casséus and revolutionary composer Germaine Tailleferre’s String Quartet. The performance starts at 2 p.m. in the park’s Rockwood Circle.

Attend a French-themed wine-and-cheese pairing at Murray’s
Those looking to celebrate Bastille Day and learn a few new things in the process will want to drop by Murray’s Cheese for a 90-minute romp through French-fromage history. On Sunday, the shop’s cheesemongers will host a French-cheese tasting with wine pairings. Grab tickets ($90) here.

Go on a study-abroad trip without ever leaving the city
For more than two decades, the French Institute: Alliance Française has hosted the city’s most over-the-top Bastille Day celebration, and 2019 is no exception. On Sunday, the organization will once again take over three blocks of 60th Street, from Fifth Avenue to Lexington Avenue, for a daylong celebration complete with a Champagne, cocktail, and jazz party in the institute’s Sky Room, a screening of the 2017 hit film C’est la Vie, a French market featuring 60 vendors, and four uninterrupted hours of live music. The event itself is free, but some of the activities require tickets, which you can find here.

Order a box of religieuses from Dominique Ansel Bakery
If you’re going to celebrate Bastille Day, it might as well be with one of the city’s most famous French pâtissiers. From July 12 through the 14th, both locations of Dominique Ansel’s bakeries will be selling religieuses, or double-decker cream puffs, filled with Nutella cream and outfitted with a striped shirt and marshmallow beret, for $8 each. Grab one — or a half-dozen, if you’re feeling particularly inspired by the occasion.

Get dressed up and dance the night away with the Maison de Oui. 
On Saturday, Bushwick’s House of Yes will become something like a modern Moulin Rouge, with guests encouraged — nay, required — to dress up for the occasion in their most flamboyant outfits. That means rouged cheeks, powdered wigs, and other let-them-eat-cake wear. There will be Champagne, a French-kissing booth, some cancan dancing, and all manner of debauchery. Admission is free before midnight with RSVP and ticket prices going up to $35 after that.

Source: Grub Guide: How To Celebrate Bastille Day 2019 in NYC

As families flee Paris, fingers point at Airbnb

Paris (AFP) – The bells will ring for the last time this week at Vaugirard elementary school in central Paris, the latest school in the city to close as spiralling property prices drive families out of the capital.

Just 51 students were enrolled this year at Vaugirard, a stark illustration of the steady decline in numbers at many schools in central Paris which some parents and teachers blame on the surge of home-renting giant Airbnb.

“The centre of Paris is basically becoming a vast Airbnb hotel, and there are fewer and fewer residents,” Jean-Jacques Renard, vice president of the FCPE parents’ association, told AFP. Continue reading “As families flee Paris, fingers point at Airbnb” →

Pierre Lhomme, Legendary French Cinematographer, Dies at 89

He was behind the look of films like Jean-Pierre Melville’s ‘Army of Shadows’ and Jean Eustache’s ‘The Mother and the Whore.’

Pierre Lhomme, the French cinematographer behind such films as Army of Shadows, The Mother and the Whore, Camille Claudel and Cyrano de Bergerac, has died. He was 89.

Lhomme died July 4 in Arles, France, the French Society of Cinematographers told The Hollywood Reporter.

Lhomme received a César award in 1989 for his work on Camille Claudel, which was directed by former cameraman Bruno Nuytten. He received a second César in 1991 for Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s Cyrano de Bergerac, which also won a technical prize at Cannes.

Among his 60-odd credits are films by Chris Marker (Le Joli Mai, which Lhomme co-directed, and A bientôt, j’espère), Robert Bresson (Four Nights of a Dreamer), Marguerite Duras (Les Mains Négatives, Le Navire Night), Claude Miller (This Sweet Sickness, Deadly Circuit) and Alain Cavalier (Le combat dans l’île, Pillaged).

Lhomme also shot several Merchant-Ivory features, including the James Ivory-directed Quartet, Maurice, Jefferson in Paris and Le Divorce, and Ismail Merchant’s Cotton Mary. His last feature credit was on Le Divorce, which he lensed in 2003.

Born in Boulogne-Billancourt on April 5, 1930, Lhomme studied briefly in the U.S. before trying to make it as a jazz musician in Paris in the late 1940s and early ’50s. He was then accepted into the prestigious École nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière, a highly technical film school whose alumni includes fellow cinematographers Henri Decaë (The 400 Blows), William Lubtchansky (Shoah) and Philippe Rousselot (A River Runs Through It, Big Fish) and directors like Gaspar Noé and Jean-Jacques Annaud.

Lhomme graduated from Louis-Lumière in 1953 and began working as an assistant cameraman and camera operator on films like Philippe de Broca’s The Love Game and Jean Becker’s Man Called Rocca. He also befriended several directors of the budding French New Wave, working as an operator on Eric Rohmer’s first feature, The Sign of the Lion, and co-directing Marker’s 1962 Paris-set documentary, Le Joli Mai.

His first feature credit as a cinematographer was on Robert Darène’s 1958 pirate adventure The Amorous Corporal, for which he was co-credited with Marcel Weiss.

Lhomme went on to shoot dozens of features from the 1960s up to the late 1990s. One of his most memorable early collaborations was on Jean Eustache’s sprawling 220-minute drama The Mother and the Whore, which he shot in high-contrast 16mm black-and-white.

Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Bernadette Lafont and Françoise Lebrun, the film was made on a tiny budget and became a minor sensation in France during the post-May ’68 years. Lhomme worked again with Eustache on the hybrid fiction-documentary A Dirty Story, starring Michael Lonsdale and Jean-Noël Picq and released theatrically in 1977.

Lhomme’s most renowned work was on Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 French Resistance epic Army of Shadows, starring Lino Ventura and Simone Signoret. Shot in monochrome color tones that channeled the somber, stifling atmosphere of Vichy France during the World War II, the film was a hit at home but wasn’t released in the U.S. until 2006, where it grossed more than $700,000 in theaters and was widely hailed as a masterpiece.

“It was only after Army of Shadows that I felt like a real cinematographer,” Lhomme told the French-Canadian newspaper Le Devoir in 2007. “Melville asked me to do things I’d never tried before. I remember when I messed up a shot that came out so dark, you couldn’t see anything. Melville said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll put some nice music there.’”

Along with his César awards, Lhomme received a Prix Premio Gianni di Venanzo, named after the Italian cinematographer of 8½, in 2005, and a lifetime achievement prize at the Camerimage festival in Poland in 2008. He was also crowned an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters and a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in France.

During a 12-hour interview that Lhomme gave with students at the French film school La Fémis in 2014, he summed up his approach to cinematography this way: “I never had a fixed or preconceived idea about cinema … One of the main skills of a good cameraman is to be able to pass from one director to another and adapt to their different worlds. What I loved above all else was working with talented people.”

Source: Pierre Lhomme, Legendary French Cinematographer, Dies at 89