The Substance, the film Benjamin Millepied at La Seine musicale, the novel by Adrien Bourne… Madame Figaro Cultural Week

The other side of fitness

It’s the movie that’s been buzzing since Cannes, the one that could land Coralie Fargit an Oscar nomination for director and Demi Moore for best actress. In The materialalready a Croisette screenplay winner, the Frenchwoman embraces body horror (a subgenre of horror cinema that focuses on body transformations) to denounce the dictates of beauty and youth. Her Hollywood star plays an iconic audiovisual fitness figure who, despite her brilliant fifties, is neglected. Devastated by the news, he decides to inject himself with a serum capable of creating a better version of himself (Margaret Qualley). But the shift is mandatory: one week in a new skin and one week in a fifty-year-old envelope. Otherwise, beware of the consequences. But in our performance-addicted society, youth is an addiction… And the filmmaker is happy to dip into the transformative escalation, grimace and perversion of the body to support it. The humor is in almost every frame, the actresses’ total abandon, the feminist message as accessible as its images are radical, sometimes downright terrifying. A great cinematic gesture, joyful and unique. M.L.

The materialBy Coralie Fargit, with Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley…

Millipede thanks Jeff Buckley

After his very modern vision Romeo and Juliet By Gounod, who transcended genres, Benjamin Millepied returns to La Seine musicale in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris. Gracewith a subtitle revealing his new work, Jeff Buckley dancesand this idea of ​​reproducing a warm and spontaneous atmosphere on stage contributed to the success of the shows of this iconic rock figure of the late 20th century.^e century. Graceit is also the only album that Jeff Buckley recorded in the studio, an album that musician Jimmy Page considered one of the best of the 1990s. But it is from all of the singer’s songs that Benjamin Millepied will draw on for the two-hour show, which will be a kind of kaleidoscopic portrait, both sung and danced, of the man who disappeared in Memphis in 1997 at the age of 30. It’s the music, Jeff’s voice, that creates the movement. Benjamin Millepied’s enveloping, warm, almost loving choreography brings us closer to the singer’s heart and thoughts. This shared show will also feature images from archive photos, videos and live sequences, giving the whole thing a cinematic and decidedly rock feel. BB:

Grace – danced by Jeff BuckleyNovember 5th to 10th at La Seine musicale in Boulogne-Billancourt (Eau de Seine). laseinemusicale.com:

A mountain of emotions

Resort on the Assy plateau near Mont Blanc. A young boy suffering from tuberculosis. The atmosphere of such a particular microcosm. We think The magic mountainThomas Mann’s story, written in 1924, but here we are in 1948, and these nursing homes are seeing the end of their golden age because vaccines are coming… The whole point of this novel is to heal. from this moment, when one epoch passes into another, where oblivion, like snow on the relief, will bury the traces of this isolated life devoted to the often futile struggle against disease. The writing is in keeping with the 19th century theme itself^ewith an assumed romantic dimension, which gives the whole thing an unexpected change of scenery, a charming strangeness.

Marcel does not understand how his mother, who raised him alone, could send him to a luxurious sanatorium, in principle reserved for adults. At first, the frightened teenager will form bonds with his nurse, with a wax sculptor who seems to have been there for all eternity, with Valentine, who has come to paint a virgin on the wall of the sanatorium chapel. Moreover, Marcel not only has to fight against bacteria, but also against mania; he is convinced that his father, whom he never knew, is hiding somewhere in the sanatorium.

The superposition of several eras, through some very moving characters, organizes the disappearance of a place of life, a community, a system of care, and in the eternal “nothing will be the same” searches for stubborn ghosts that never give up. . The novel is also a tribute to the downtrodden of the earth, to those who “take life in the face” and to the children who are faced with tragedy so early, but still love at full speed. IP: