Why “L’Événement” is the most beautiful French film of 2021

Awarded the Golden Lion in Venice, Audrey Diwan’s second film delivers a moving adaptation of the novel, and the story, by Annie Ernaux.

40 years old, Audrey Diwan has already been a journalist at Glamor , editorial director of Stylist , writer, collection director, screenwriter, and finally, director. Until this magnificent Golden Lion unanimously awarded in Venice for L’Événement , his second film, adapted from the book by Annie Ernaux  [ . . . ]

Continue story at Vogue: Why “L’Événement” is the most beautiful French film of 2021

French Food for the Holidays? These 4 Podcasts in English & French Will Help Get You Through

Anne-Fleur, Frenchly’s podcast reviewer, serves up 4 podcasts for the Francophile who wants to cook French this Holiday season.

By Anna Fluer

The holiday season is upon us and I am struggling to come up with an exciting and somewhat traditional meal for Christmas Eve. I will be hosting my parents for the very first time in a while. On top of that, Christmas is the easy part! My household is going from a 3 person family to 6 (my parents are traveling with one of my sisters) for two whole weeks. So I need serious help in the form of inspiration for menus that are as tasty and healthy as they are celebratory. So I did what I typically do when I am looking for ideas and information: I opened my podcast app and searched.

What I love about gathering information this way is that I am able to consider many options at my own pace while hearing a story at the same time. There is no huge stack of books to pore over; just me and my headphones. I selected my four favorite podcasts for you: three in French and one in English. We will talk about food, and since we are Francophiles, I added a podcast dedicated to wine.

Get ready, you are going to get hungry!

As a reminder, here is what the headphones next to the titles mean: one headphone, like this: 🎧  is for shorter and more tractable French and up to three headphones like this:  🎧  🎧 🎧  for longer and more complex. 

The Earful Tower, Oliver Gee 🎧  

What it’s about

Finally a podcast in English? Yes! And one I really like. Oliver Gee is an Australian expat in Paris who has been taking his audience through France and Paris with his “ Earful Tower” for the past 5 years. He talks about pretty much everything with his guests–people who make the city of lights … shine. It is both a fun podcast and very instructive.

What I like about this show

I love Oliver Gee’s sense of humor. He has lived in Paris for a while, and incorporates jokes and more from both his native Australian and French cultures.

An episode not to miss

There are tons of episodes you should not miss here but since we are talking about food and wine, you should absolutely listen to “Le Meurice : Inside the Kitchen.” Oliver Gee stayed at the iconic hotel Le Meurice in the center of Paris and asked to interview the head chef, Amaury Bouhours. Not only is the interview truly fascinating to just talk to the chef alone, but half of it is recorded in the actual kitchen of this legendary place. You’ll learn about what it’s like to run a restaurant with two Michelin stars, about his cooking background and of course, about French food.

 Rue de Rivoli, the street of Le Meurice, the iconic palace hotel in the center of Paris.

Gudden Appetit (RTL Originals), Mathieu Lopez 🎧  🎧 

What it’s about

This podcast is the most straight to the point tool you’ll find to gather exciting recipes of French classics. In less than four minutes, Mathieu Lopez will share a recipe for you to put together delicious dishes for your guests … without having to take the day off!

What I like about this show

I like the variety of foods covered by this show: he talks about appetizers, desserts and everything in between. The host also covers different kinds of food and gives options for vegetarians as well as meat lovers. Gudden Appetit is published weekly, on Sundays, and already has over 30 episodes brimming with 30 possibilities as each show focuses on one specific dish. Mathieu Lopez also offers the recipe in the descriptive notes of each episode so there is no need to stress over taking notes while listening.

An episode not to miss

I am a French woman living in the United States, and as cliché as it may sound, I miss a lot of the foods I grew up with. Especially foie gras and stinky cheeses. Some of my favorite recent episodes cover just that–French foods I long for: foie gras, Christmas cookies, orange and ginger bread,  as well as my favorite kind of pasta, which is not so French, but nonetheless, alla Genovese.

Foie Gras, a French holiday tradition

Les Mains dans le Raisin, Julien 🎧 🎧 

What it’s about

The name of this podcast literally means “hands in the grapes,”which is a sort of a pun for being caught in the act. “Les Mains dans le Raisin” is a podcast about wine. In it, we follow Julien, a young winemaker in the Beaujolais region and Julien introduces us to wine personalities, scientists and other wine enthusiasts and aims to better understand his profession. This podcast is somewhat immersive and you’ll hear winemakers cut the grapes as well as people clinging to glasses as they cheer, just as if you were there with Julien. The lexicon may be a tad more complex than the other podcasts of this selection, so if you decide to give it a try, look up things like levures (yeast), tanins (tannins), AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée), or even robe (color).

What I like about this show

I like this podcast because it has no specific agenda and instead follows the real questions of a new winemaker asking how it’s done and done well. In “Les Mains dans le Raisin,”  you’ll hear about the impact of climate change on the grapes as much and you’ll also learn about how to taste wine … which is harder than you may think!

An episode not to miss

This podcast is fairly new and only four episodes have been published to date. My favorite episode is this one where Julien explores the impact of global warming on winemaking. It is  truly fascinating.

Grapes and winemaking in Burgundy, France.

Fait Maison, Céline Ghelardi 🎧 

Full disclosure, I consulted for Céline as she was working on her concept. 

What it’s about

Céline Ghelardi is a French expat who lives in Ohio. Pediatric nurse by day, she has a passion for cooking and baking. Her passion is so strong that she passed the CAP Pâtisserie, a French certification all bakers must obtain to sell their goods. A few years ago, she became a cooking advisor for an e-commerce platform, Guy Demarles (the French equivalent of Bon Cook) and had an epiphany: this is what she wanted to do, cook and help people cook what they really want. Her podcast is very new (the first episode was published this week) but I think it’s very promising. In under 15 minutes, Céline introduces French classics, like savory and sweet tartes (pies) or apéro dînatoire de Noël (there is no real word in English for this: it’s an appetizer turned into a meal. Sort of.) and deep dives into  step-by-step instructions to recipes with real chef tips. Her modo is that homemade food always tastes better and is better for your health. She has told me that she wants to disabuse people of the notion that homemade food is very time consuming or more difficult to attain.

What I like about this show

I have been nurturing the fantasy of becoming a cook and hosting guests at a small café. While it probably will never happen, I worked on my CAP as well (the degree I mentioned above) and listening to Céline’s passion is truly inspiring. I really enjoyed that she digs deeper than sharing just a recipe and also shares very accessible tips to make the results of the recipe stand out.

An episode not to miss

The first episode focuses on tartes, and walks you through the making of a tarte Bourdaloue, a pear and almond delicious treat. I dare you not to make one this holiday season after you listen to this!

Anne-Fleur Andrle is a Boston-based French-American podcast producer. She hosts a French Morning show called, French Expat, where she documents the journeys of French-speaking expats around the world. She is so passionate about podcasts that she created a podcast about it, called Génération Podcast, and has a weekly curated newsletter with French podcasts that she thinks are not to miss. She also consults for various organizations to help ramp up their podcast footprint

Source: French Food for the Holidays? These 4 Podcasts in English & French Will Help Get You Through – Frenchly

Comme une Française: French Pronunciation Fundamentals

With these go-to French phrases, you’ll be able to spontaneously congratulate anybody in French (without awkwardly using “Bien Fait”). 💾 Read, save and/or print the full written lesson here (free): https://www.commeunefrancaise.com/blo… 🎓 Join my Everyday French crash course (free): https://www.commeunefrancaise.com/wel… There are plenty of situations where you might want to spontaneously congratulate a French-speaking friend, neighbor, or family member. And while your instinct may be to say “Bien Fait”… this is very wrong, and your good intentions may be misinterpreted as an insult. To help you avoid this awkward situation, in today’s video I’ll introduce you to some more appropriate ways to congratulate someone in French. Let’s see how many you can memorize, so that you always have a go-to expression for whenever something wonderful happens!

Take care and stay safe. 😘 from Grenoble, France. Géraldine

Please don’t turn Notre-Dame into a post-Vatican II cathedral to the modern world

Like many parish churches built in the 1970s and ’80s, the Notre-Dame redesign seems to take its inspiration from sensibilities unique to our own decades, rather than drawing on time-tested understandings of God.

By Doug Girardot

It was a sunny Marathon Monday in Boston in 2019 when I got a notification on my phone that the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris was on fire. I watched a live video feed as flames engulfed the lead-and-wood roof of the church. As Notre-Dame’s ornate spire collapsed, I felt a sadness that must have been similar to how people reacted as they watched the Twin Towers collapse in New York in 2001, even if for different reasons.

More than two years later, the teams working on Notre-Dame’s rehabilitation have come up with new plans for its interior. The proposed redesign hardly alters the cathedral’s existing structure, but it does envision a so-called discovery trail around the church to help visitors learn the story of the Bible, as well as spaces for meditation and digital projections of Bible verses in different languages. The tentative plans—shared by the London-based paper The Telegraph on Nov. 26—have caused an uproar among tradition-minded pundits. (The details are scheduled to be revealed publicly on Dec. 9, when the National Heritage and Architecture Commission will begin reviewing them.)

The proposed changes to Notre-Dame would not make the cathedral into a “theme park” or “woke Disneyland,” as certain commentators on both sides of the Atlantic would have indignant readers believe. The restoration designers—led by a Catholic priest, the Rev. Gille Drouin—are evidently striving to reach out to nonbelievers from around the world and to educate Christians about their own faith.

All the same, I do agree that the cathedral should stay as it was. Notre-Dame, in all of its Gothic magnificence, serves as a vital reminder of God’s grandeur. I understand where the cathedral’s redesigners are coming from, and I would not dismiss any modern innovation out of hand, but there are better avenues for them to pursue the work of evangelization they are trying to do.

Ultimately, the controversy over the proposed redesign of Notre-Dame reflects a debate about how we approach God. Do we see him as a philosophical wonder, a mystery, praiseworthy above all else? Or do we seek the more personal and active God we meet in Jesus?

Although Christianity is founded on belief in the Trinity, there are a number of dualities in our faith: Jesus was both human and divine; the contents of our faith are found in both Scripture and tradition; the Eucharist comes to us in the form of bread and wine. There is also a binary of how we conceptualize God: The Lord is the unfathomable and infinite creator of the universe, but he is also the poor man from Roman-occupied Palestine who showed mercy toward sinners and healed the sick as he wandered around Galilee.

In our time, the church has emphasized this pastoral view of God embodied in Jesus—and rightly so. In the centuries before the Second Vatican Council, the institutional church had gradually separated from the community of believers, leaving some with a more abstract understanding of their faith; for many, ritual and dogma were given pride of place over a personal relationship between themselves and God. The reforms of the council can be said to have renewed the church, reminding Christians that God is close to each of us in an intensely personal way.

The proposed changes run the risk of making a timeless monument to God’s majesty into something much more pedestrian.

Vatican II might seem worlds away from discussion of a 13th-century cathedral, but the way in which the council reframed our conception of how God relates to humankind speaks to the current controversy.

While I am sympathetic to the intentions of the team working to redesign the cathedral, I am skeptical that the proposed alterations will ultimately make a substantial difference in evangelizing people from around the world. The additions may push a handful of visitors each day to reconsider the Christian faith (or to consider it for the first time), but did the splendid architecture and reverent atmosphere of the cathedral before the fire fail in this regard? And isn’t the worldwide synod that the church is currently undergoing a better (and less expensive) tool to reach out to such groups on the margins of the church in a deeper way?

Unfortunately, like many parish churches built in the 1970s and ’80s, the Notre-Dame redesign seems to take its inspiration from sensibilities unique to our own decades, rather than drawing on time-tested understandings of God, which are as old as humanity itself. The proposed changes run the risk of making a timeless monument to God’s majesty into something much more pedestrian.

Because of our human imperfection and limitations, no cathedral can ever capture the myriad of facets of God’s divinity. But Notre-Dame in its pre-2019 iteration did a more than adequate job of expressing the transcendent nature of God, and that was enough. The cathedral’s soaring turrets, vaulted ceilings and pointed arches cause us to look up toward the heavens, spiritually no less than literally.

Like many other intellectual and aesthetic products of medieval times, Notre-Dame continues to remind Catholics of how small we are next to God in all his immensity, majesty and splendor. Just because we have opened our field of view to include the Son Incarnate does not mean that we should lose sight of the Father Almighty.

***

Doug Girardot is an O’Hare Fellow at America. He graduated from Boston College in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in history.

Source: Please don’t turn Notre-Dame into a post-Vatican II cathedral to the modern world | America Magazine