The film “All We Imagine as Light”, the London Grammar album, Etienne Kern’s novel… Madame Figaro Cultural Week

Three Indian women

Indian cinema, focused on mass entertainment, did not enjoy the honors of the Cannes competition for thirty years. Young Payal Kapadia changed the situation in 2024 Everything we imagine as lightt, came off the Croisette with the Festival Grand Prix. In this first feature film, partly shot without the approval of the authorities of his country, the former documentary filmmaker captures the fate of three women. Prabha is a nurse, respects traditions and is married to a man who goes to work in Germany and does not hear from her for years. Her young colleague and roommate, Anu, is a Hindu, modern and in love with a Muslim man she is secretly seeing. The widow and the hospital canteen threaten Parvati with eviction. Through the fate of this trio, the director questions the disparities of class, religion and gender in India, daring to do the forbidden by filming a love scene between Anu and her lover. Very aggressive in Puritan society and opposed to interfaith couples. This sequence takes place out of sight in the second installment, where the heroines leave the hustle and bustle of Mumbai for the tranquility of the ocean. A symbol of possible emancipation away from human society. M.L.

Everything we imagine as lightBy Payal Kapadia, with Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha…

London Grammar shines

Eleven years after their self-titled debut album If you wait and certified platinum in France and double platinum in the UK, the members of London Grammar deliver their fourth effort, The greatest love. And nothing seems to question the unwavering friendship that unites the trio from the corridors, auditoriums and bars of Nottingham University, with singer Hannah Reid and guitarist Dan Rothman soon joined by keyboardist and beatmaker Dominic ‘Dot’ Major to form a band. With Hannah Reid’s mesmerizing voice still prominent, the band continues to blaze a trail in British pop annals like the legendary Cocteau Twins or The xx. Multiple Brit Award and Ivor Novello Award winners, London Grammar have de facto cast their icy blondes as figures whose sensitivity and skin-deep lyrics allow the band to follow a story unlike any other. of history. , at once melancholic, dreamy and devilishly captivating. Fruits of an endless creative cycle, The Greatest Love’s songs are a fusion of electronic music, 1990s acoustic sounds, heavenly vocals and catchy beats. Surrounded by mesmerizing backing vocals, Hannah Reid’s voice has never sounded so clear and gorgeous. PG:

The greatest love, Because. Concert at Zénith in Paris on October 31st – La Villette.le-zenith.com

Infernal method

In The flights (from Goncourt’s first novel in 2022), Etienne Kern was interested in the unique fate of Franz Reichelt, a tailor from Bohemia, who in 1912 jumped from the first floor of the Eiffel Tower not to commit suicide, but to attempt it. his invention, the parachute, with fatal consequences. It’s another inventor, another great loser, that he focuses on in his second novel, A better lifewhere he traces the existence of the pharmacist Emile Couet, born in 1857 in Troyes and died in 1926 in Nancy, who gave his name to a famous method that has since passed into everyday language, and a formula became known that ” Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.” A whole program… Self-suggestion, hypnosis, personal development, the placebo effect are some of the daisy petals that the writer plucks from the life of a man obsessed with helping others. Who knows today that Emil Kue has sold a hundred thousand copies of his work? Self control in the early 1920s by self-conscious self-suggestion and was celebrated in both New York and Moscow, where a statue was erected in his honor, before falling into total oblivion. With great delicacy of touch, the author paints a portrait of a character who could make people laugh, and whom he makes both poignant and poetic, interweaving his story with reflections on writing (which also uses words and imagination to bring reality). as personal memories, as he had already done in his first novel, which allow him to resurrect those close to his heart in the space of the book. MTH:

A better lifeÉtienne Kern, Éditions Gallimard, 192 p., €19.50.