Claude Berri dies

One of France's most respected film directors, Claude Berri, passed away yesterday. He achieved massive success with his two films about rural deceit and revenge – Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources.

Both were very well received in the UK, and Manon des Sources was especially well received in my house, thanks to the casting of the estimable Emmanuelle Béart as the, erm, titular shepherdess. Surely every hot-blooded young man fancied booking a trip to the Provence countryside upon witnessing her open-air bathing ritual.

Berri also enjoyed considerable success as a producer, mosty recently working on Bienvenue Chez les Ch'tis – France's most popular film of recent years, woefully under-distributed in the UK – and La Graine et le Mulet (released here as Couscous), whose central family meal scene is one of modern cinema's most eye-catching and beautiful.

It wasn't me

Happy New Year everybody.

Now that festive excesses are but claret-soaked memories, thoughts must turn to 2009 and the fun ahead. From a professional perspective, the year promises to be challenging in the extreme, but you get nothing done by moaning. I hope that those of you who have enjoyed reading French Magazine over the years will continue to do so.

I am off to the France Show at Earl's Court this weekend, where I hope to spy some familiar faces. The show is always a fantastic place to immerse oneself in a bit of French culture, and to think about planning a great holiday. I might see you there!

Meanwhile in the news, it's good to see that, despite more pressing issues to deal with, even the corridors of power in the French Justice Minsitry are rife with idle speculation.

Paris Valentine's Special Offer

Here's a great offer for all your romantics out there...

If you fancy treating that special someone to a romantic break next year, I can strongly recommend the Hotel Aviatic, in Paris’s 6th arrondissement (Hotel Aviatic, 105 rue de Vaugirard, 75006 Paris; www.aviatic.fr; 0033 153632550).

The hotel would like to give French magazine readers a special Valentine’s Day package. For the whole of February 2009 they are offering two nights in a superior room plus breakfast and a half-bottle of Champagne for 359 Euros instead of 579 Euros.

P&O Ferries Christmas crossings

For those of you heading to France or beyond over the festive seasons, this just in from the P&O press office:


P&O Ferries has an extensive choice of sailings over the festive period, with space available across its route network. However there will be no services, or reduced services, on some dates.


All services and timetables can be checked on www.POferries.com or by calling 08716 646464.

Service changes include the following:

Dover - Calais
Reduced service on Christmas Eve. No service on Christmas Day. Reduced service on Boxing Day. Normal service over the New Year.


Hull - Rotterdam
No service on Christmas Day, Boxing Day, 31 December, 1 January.


Hull - Zeebrugge
No service on December 24, 25, 30 and 31.


Portsmouth - Bilbao
Full scheduled service.

Win a language course in Brittany!

There's a fabulous competition prize in the latest issue of French Magazine, on sale Thursday 4th December. You can enter here:

Go here to subscribe to French - until Christmas it's 40% off for 12 issues, so why not treat a loved one to the gift that gives all year?!

Film review: A Christmas Tale

I wondered when the standout French film of the year would land on my desk, and here it is just in time for Christmas, although you won’t be able to see it in UK cinemas until early next year.

Director Arnaud Desplechin has some serious prior: 2005’s Kings and Queen (starring his muse Almaric, pictured here after a glass of red too many) was rewarded with multiple gongs and it was clear from this César (French Oscars) triumph that he has a winning way with big name actors and large casts.

Set in the northern town of Roubaix (place of Desplechin’s birth – what a nice change to see a star-studded film set outside of Paris), we witness the gathering of the Vuillard clan for Christmas, each member having undergone a compatibility test that might save the matriarch Junon (played with trademark understatement by Deneuve) from liver cancer.

The offspring – a heavy-drinking black sheep, played with barnstorming gusto and lip by Almaric; a sad and bitter eldest sister, Anne Consigny; and a smooth and thoughtful fixer, Melvil Poupaud – harbour no end of defects (mainly self-medicated) and combine to form a perfectly dysfunctional family. Much of the humour and pathos in this tightly scripted drama comes from bickering and seething tensions. Meanwhile, Junon faces her illness with grace and fortitude.

Stylish, witty, poignant and intense, with a superlative cast and outstandingly fleshed out lesser characters, this film knocks the genre of family reunion drama – so often marred by slush in Hollywood films – into an artfully cocked beret. Go and see it.

Ségolène Royal and me

Before you get too excited, no, I am not the "dashing and handsome media figure" with whom the Socialist Party's defeated 2007 presidential candidate has recently been photographed in a "stepping out" kind of way, although you could be forgiven for thinking this to be entirely plausible.

The lucky chap in question is Bruno Gaccio, who founded the French equivalent of Spitting Image – a puppet show which lampoons politicians. He left the show in January 2007, so presumably will now be delighted that he doesn't have to take the rise out of his alleged new squeeze to pay the bills.

Me and Royal have history (well, sort of, very tenuously). I first heard of her a few years ago during a trip to the Poitou-Charentes region, of which she had just been elected Council President (2004, I think) and I vividly remember somebody – a tourism bod if memory serves – telling me that she, Royal, would be President someday. I've kept an eye out for her ever since and although Sarkozy convinced the electorate that he was the man to change France for the better, Royal is firmly back on the front foot.

As for news on the dynamic President, his wife Carla Bruni has taken an admirable public stance on Berlusconi's crude Barack Obama suntan "joke".

Whatever you say about France's current crop of public figures, boring they ain't.