Film - Paris - page 707

French-produced Taken 2 (2012) was directed by Olivier Megaton (b 1965), another
product of the Parisian suburbs, who was a graffiti artist before turning his creative hand to
film-making - with great success.
France's leading lady is Marion Cotillard (b 1975), a Paris girl and the first French wo-
man since 1959 to win an Oscar for her role as Édith Piaf in Olivier Dahan's La Môme (La
Vie en Rose; 2007). Hugely versatile, the Parisian actress went on to play an amputee in art
film De Rouille et d'Os (Rust and Bone; 2012) by Parisian director Jacques Audiard (b
1952). In her most recent film , Deux Jours, Une Nuit (Two Days, One Night; 2014),
screened at the 2014 Cannes International Film Festival, the Paris superstar plays an em-
ployee in a solar-panel factory who learns she will lose her job if her coworkers don't each
sacrifice €1000 bonuses offered to them.
Female film-makers are few: enter Pascale Ferrari (b 1960), a very talented director from
Paris whose latest film, Bird People (2014), takes place in and around a hotel at Paris'
Charles de Gaulle airport.
On Location
Paris is the perfect cinematic setting and a natural movie star: look no further than timeless
French classics Hôtel du Nord (1938), set along the Canal St-Martin, and Les Enfants du
Paradis (1946), set in 1840s Paris, both directed by Parisian film-maker Marcel Carné
(1906-96).
New Wave film director Jean-Luc Godard followed his B&W celebration of Paris in À
Bout de Souffle (Breathless; 1959) with Bande à Parte (Band of Outsiders; 1964), an enter-
taining gangster film with marvellous scenes in the Louvre.
For decades 'Most Watched French Film' kudos went to La Grand Vadrouille (The Great
Ramble; 1966), a French comedy in which five British airmen are shot down over German-
occupied France in 1942. One is catapulted into Paris' Bois de Vincennes zoo, another into
the orchestra pit of Paris' opera house, and so the comic tale unfurls.
No Parisian actress was hotter in the 1990s than Juliette Binoche (b. 1964), catapulted to
fame after diving into the shimmering, bright-turquoise water of Paris' art deco swimming
pool the Piscine de Pontoise in the 5e, in Bleu (Blue; 1993), the first in Krzysztof
Kieślowski's Trois Couleurs (Three Colours) triology. A decade on, Binoche wooed cinema-
goers in equal measure with her role as a grieving mother in Paris je t'aime (2006), a stag-
gering work comprising 18 short films - each set in a different Parisian arrondissement
(neighbourhood).
Honoured with the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2008, Laurent Cantet's Entre Les Murs (The
Class; 2008) portrays a year in the school life of pupils and teachers in a Parisian surburb.