The New Look,
haute couture revolution
Interesting angle than that of the series
The New Look
which approaches the career of Christian Dior through his rivalry with Gabrielle Chanel and his family history during the Occupation.
Coco, the most famous designer in the world, then sees her proximity to the Nazi regime taint her reputation, while her colleague, watching over her resistant sister, revolutionizes fashion with her “new look”, a formula invented by the editor-in-chief of the
Harper's Bazaar
(Glenn Close) to designate its sharp silhouettes.
Juliette Binoche here gives all her bite to the inventor of the feminine tweed suit, while Ben Mendelsohn brilliantly portrays the reserve of the couturier in full rise.
These ten episodes also feature two opposing temperaments (the socialite and the very shy one), which also feature the contemporaries of the two giants, Balmain and Balenciaga in particular.
Filmed entirely in Paris and enhanced by slick artistic direction and in-tune staging (Julia Ducournau on two episodes), this series also offers a fascinating insight into the workshops and salons of the house of Dior, which provided support for the project. .
M.L.
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The New Look
, by Todd A. Kessler, with Ben Mendelsohn, Juliette Binoche, Maisie Williams, John Malkovich… Starting February 14 on Apple TV+.
The meaning of the scene
Mechanical Cabaret 2 Photo Matt Bohli ADAGP, Paris, 2023.
What do Farah Atassi and Ulla von Brandenburg, these two artists brought together by the Pernod Ricard Foundation, have in common?
One, born in Brussels in 1981, develops figurative painting while handling an abstract vocabulary based on geometric shapes (above).
Straight lines, thickness and pentiments create spaces similar to collages.
The other, born in Karlsruhe in 1974, trained in scenography, multiplies the supports and mediums (installations, films, watercolors, performances, etc.) which she stages according to the exhibitions.
Marjolaine Lévy, the curator of the exhibition
“
La Société des spectacles”, sketches a response: “Perhaps an exaltation, a celebration of the spectacle of forms that a half-open curtain gives us to see”, before specifying that “at Farah Atassi, the curtain is open, the dancers are motionless, time has stopped.
The curtain opens not on a spectacle but on a spectacle of forms.
Faced with the theatricality of this painting, the viewer is invited to enter the environments of Ulla von Brandenburg, to cross the color in the monumental paintings on fabric deployed in space.
In the film
The Window Opens Like an Orange
(2022), she revives the ghost of Sonia Delaunay while Atassi features musicians and masked characters.
These two artists, heirs of modernism, have as a common denominator a reflection on space and the use of the stage.
L.C.
“La Société des spectacles”, from February 13 to April 20, at the Pernod Ricard Foundation, in Paris.
foundation-pernod-ricard.com
Crossed destinies
The writer Lola Gruber publishes Tamas Loky.
On the cover, a black and white photo of a woman holding a fine, decorated porcelain cup in her hands, her eyes closed as if immersed in deep reflection, in thoughts, perhaps in search of memories , she is thoughtful, attentive... And then, there is this strange title,
Horn came at night
.
Who could this mysterious Horn be?
Did he come with good or bad intentions, and why at night?
The mystery is complete.
Then, we discover the first sentences: “On the envelope that old Ilse took in hand, addresses were written then crossed out.
Scarred streets, in the old cities – Bratislava, Vejprty, Dresden – the homes that Ilse knew and then left.”
The mystery thickens, and we then plunge into the intense pleasure of discovering Ilse's life: born in Czechoslovakia during the interwar period, she lost her father in the bombing of Prague, and worked in a theater in Bratislava. .
And then, we also meet Simon Ungar, who loses both his job and his girlfriend, so he has time to finally go in search of his origins.
He has so little information about his family.
Direction Olomouc, in the Czech Republic.
It seems that the parallels never cross, Lola Gruber proves the opposite in this abundant and exhilarating novel which interweaves the destinies at the heart of a Central Europe disrupted and disrupted by great history.
She has an intense art of putting poetry into the description of settings with infinite precision, the images emerge like in a film, and then she has this power to slip in nuggets of fierce and impactful humor at the end of with each sentence, tragedies become comedies;
with her, the famous aphorism “Humor is the politeness of despair” is verified, and this investigative novel lacks neither, with a lot of love in addition.
BB
Horn came at night
, by Lola Gruber, Éditions Christian Bourgois, 616 p., €23.