#l'echo

by Joëlle Lehrer - L'Echo, October 2, 2019

So much beauty in each scene, gesture, and glance is incredibly rare in cinema.  Awarded the Screenplay Prize at Cannes, Céline Sciamma's film is a feminine ode to love and art.  Discussion with its magnificent actresses.

It was whispered in Cannes that this film could win the Palme d'Or or the prize for directing.  It would be awarded the prize for best screenplay!  However, it’s all about direction and performance in this work that tells the story of the encounter between an impoverished young aristocrat (who is set to marry an Italian nobleman) and a painter of the same age who has to paint her portrait. The former refuses to marry as well as to be painted, the latter must fulfill her mission as best she can.  Both of them will send the conventions of love and art flying.  And all this in 1770!  Just before the end of the Enlightenment.  This film about women is a wonderful example of what the  “female gaze” is in cinema today.

Even more than a love story between two young women in period costume, what other treasure does "Portrait de la jeune fille en feu" hold?  

Adèle Haenel: The belief in love and equality in relationships, in what it brings to our lives.

Noémie Merlant: The love story they experience, it broadens them.  Beyond a love story, this film depicts a story of female collaborators.  And shows how they dare to live for a moment.

Noémie, you play a young painter, who’s very free.  Isn't she, in a way, the double of the director Céline Sciamma?  

N. M.: Céline's gaze on me influenced my interpretation, yes.  And the relationship is clear between the director and her actress and the painter - whom I play - and her model - whom Adèle plays - there’s a horizontal gaze between the different individuals.  In this way, each one can express herself.  In the end, my character is not completely free but curious and determined.  Thanks to Héloïse, Adèle’s character, I find my freedom and my painting.

The film effectively depicts the condition of women in 1770.  What might we envy them?  

A. H.: The feeling of being secluded.  The fact of freeing themselves from the world order that doesn’t allow this kind of love between women.  But it’s not related to the period.  And then, the aspect of interaction and dialogue between multiple social classes which is unprecedented.  The fact that they empower themselves to live, which is a novelty for each of them.

At what point do your characters stop scrutinizing each other?  

A. H.: Heloise scrutinizes Marianne, but less obviously than the other way around because, officially, her position is to be looked at.  She’s just a "thing" that is looked at, that doesn‘t have eyes.  In silence, inactivity, passivity, there is a much more comprehensive way of considering the person in front of her.

N. M.: I think they never stop looking at each other throughout the film.  That's what love is, always discovering new things about one another.

What were the constraints of filming?  The costumes?

N. M.: The costumes may seem restrictive but it’s through them that we find our movements.  Like the text, it’s very predetermined but in the end, it’s a real tool.

The "female gaze" runs through the film.  What’s your understanding of this expression?

A. H.: The "female gaze" is consciousness of the "male gaze".  It’s something that has been created in response to a rather "objectivizing" perspective.  And that repositions the woman as a subject by giving her back all her complexities as an individual.  The "female gaze" emphasizes the major deficiencies in the supposed universality of the male gaze.

N. M.: The "male gaze", the masculine perspective, "objectifies" the woman a little too often.

A. H.: In the "female gaze", there’s something more egalitarian.  I think that respect is a bit of a double-edged sword.  There’s an aspect of "I respect what I don't understand".  Being appreciated is better than respect.

Does this film represent a new level in your career?

A. H.: I’m in a dynamic of slow ascent.  At any rate, of constant progress.  This film is particularly important.  It’s the result of an artistic ambition.

N. M.: It’s given me new motivation.  And a new way of understanding the profession.  This film helped me to have a clearer view of cinema.

A. H.: There’s something ultra-political about this film.  As an actress, you learn to defer to a director and to give up trusting yourself to trusting someone else.  And in fact, this film reestablishes our intuition.  It places that in esteem once again.

N. M.: This film encouraged me to trust myself more.

A. H.: Then, of course, it changes our relationship with the director.  We don't let anyone push us around.  We pay attention to what we feel.

[Please don’t repost this anywhere, in part or in whole.  Feel free to reblog, or at least cite your source and provide a link back here.  Asking permission would be nice in an ideal world, but I’m a realist - I know far too well how easy it is to appropriate stuff on Tumblr.  I would be the first to admit that my translations are not perfect - there are some words and phrases that simply do not drop neatly into an  equivalent in English, and I constantly fix typos and make changes or corrections in older posts - but they do take a lot of work and time.  Thanks for understanding. - C.]  

by Joëlle Lehrer - L’Echo, June 29, 2021

After the triumph of "Portrait de la jeune fille en feu", director Céline Sciamma offers the very subtle "Petite maman".  An opportunity to talk with her about the world of children, secrets and mourning.

After the death of her grandmother, a little girl meets her mother at the same age.  This is the heart of Céline Sciamma's new work.  A director who thinks that all films are political, who doesn't film with stars but would love to work with Omar Sy, and thinks that her next production could be destined for the small screen.

Your film starts with a "goodbye", which is unusual.  It's a bit like if you had turned your head upside down.  Emir Kusturica told me that sometimes, it is better to put your head upside down to see the world.  Do you agree?

Yes, except that for me, it's my way of putting my head in the right place.  Where I come from and who I am always make me feel like I'm upside down in relation to the world.  And maybe turning other people around, rather than myself, isn’t a difficult position for me to be in.  This idea for a screenplay came to me in an absolutely straightforward way almost as though I didn’t have to look for it.  What I did have to look for was how to turn the audience around and put them in an "upside down" that would be the new "right side up".  And give them a new perspective.

How did you come up with the idea of an eight-year-old girl who meets her mother at the same age?

As an image, that of two little girls building a hut.  I thought, "That's a mother and her daughter at the same age."

Just because you've wondered: "What was my mother like at my age?"?

Of course, I've wondered that all my life!  Trying to understand your parents is an eternal pursuit.   Wondering what our parents have passed on to us from their childhood is a very common question.  Some people don't want to know, others are obsessed with it.

The two little girls have two favorite games: one is building and decorating the hut, and the other is creating a play with several characters.  Which of these games do you see yourself in the most?

The little shared play.  This game that they take very seriously.  As a child, I played this game with my sister and brother.  When I was ten years old, I envisioned a criminal investigation.  And this time I envisioned it professionally.

In the director’s statement, you explain that children have experienced a staggering flood of crises and collective hardships in recent years and that you feel it is vital to include them, to give them stories.  Hence this film?

Exactly.  And I also wanted to make a film about grief.  I had the idea a long time ago, but during the first lockdown, when we were in a period of collective mourning, I thought I should make this film quickly.  And take children very seriously.  There was no official message for them.  They were suspected of being contaminating agents and were afraid of catching the disease.  Children who have already seen the film talk a lot about mourning for the grandmother.  This is what they often experience in life and what they dread.

In "Petite maman", one of the little girls says: "It’s not that we don’t want to tell our secrets but that we don’t have anyone to tell them to".  Do you slip some of your secrets into each of your films?

Yes, I do.  There are always two levels of secrets that you put in films.  There's the one we put in and the more it goes on, the more I say it.  Here, the character of the grandmother is completely inspired by mine.  The set decoration is based on hers.  It was the first time I’d worked with a ghost.  It was my secret, the personal heart of the film.  And, at the same time, I say it.  And then there’s the secret that the film reveals to you at some point.  My reputation is to be cerebral but that's not why I know everything.  Secrets are often things you have to live with on your own.

"Petite maman" talks about grief, how it is experienced, spoken of and shared.  Yet it’s never maudlin.  Because you didn't want to get into that realm?

Well, yes, but for me, the tears must be in the theater.  I work instead for the tears of the audience.  And even more so when I work with children, as I do here.  Because it’s not about the emotions of the characters.

[Please don’t repost this anywhere, in part or in whole.  Feel free to reblog, or at least cite your source and provide a link back here.  Asking permission would be nice in an ideal world, but I’m a realist - I know far too well how easy it is to appropriate stuff on Tumblr.  I would be the first to admit that my translations are not perfect - there  are some words and phrases that simply do not drop neatly into an equivalent in English, and I constantly fix typos and make changes or corrections in older posts - but they do take a lot of work and time.  Thanks for understanding. - C]

categorie: nieuw initiatief

In de aanloop naar de eindejaarsfeesten presenteert Sabato, het weekendmagazine van De Tijd | L’Echo, op 21 november de tweede editie van Sabato De Luxe. Dit extra dikke collector’s item krijgt een exclusieve look & feel met onder andere een speciaal voor deze editie ontworpen cover. Om het exclusieve karakter van dit nummer extra in de verf te zetten, krijgen 250 CEO’s de luxe-editie persoonlijk bij hen thuis overhandigd de dag van de verschijning.

Su-Mei Tse, "L’Echo," 2003. Courtesy of the artist and Peter Blum Gallery, New York. © Su-Mei Tse

New Post has been published on http://www.therakyatpost.com/world/2014/09/20/belgium-thwarts-jihadist-attacks/

Belgium thwarts jihadist attacks

BRUSSELS, Sept 20, 2014:

The Belgian authorities have prevented several attacks by jihadist fighters returning home from Syria and by sympathisers with the Islamic State extremist group, a report said today.

The daily L’Echo cited unnamed sources as saying the planned attacks could have been similar to the one on the Jewish Museum in central Brussels in May which left four people dead.

The suspect in that case, Frenchman Medhi Nemmouche, spent more than a year fighting with Islamist extremists in Syria and is now being held in Belgium on charges of “murder in a terrorist context”.

Up to 400 Belgian nationals are estimated to have gone to fight in Syria, with about 90 known to have returned home, L’Echo said.

“Our starting point is that among them, one out of nine aim to carry out an attack,” a source said.

“That is a conservative estimate, if you also take into account the people who help them.”

The newspaper said its sources did not want to give details of the planned attacks nor of the operations to prevent them, for reasons of security and so as not to alarm the public.

Several arrests have been made, it added.

Officials declined to provide any details but did confirm that several operations had been carried out.

“We are working full time on the problem of the returning fighters,” Belga news agency cited a federal judicial spokesman as saying.

“We work together with the security services and that led us to carry out several operations,” the spokesman said.

Belgium, like many European countries, is increasingly concerned about nationals going to fight in Syria and Iraq for fear they will return home battle hardened and even more radicalised, posing a threat to security.