Christmas Songs

I know it's a few days late, but I've been really quite ill over the past few days. It's a relief to be back though. 


I thought I'd do a post a few posts about Christmas because after talking to the current French assistant at school, it seems that the traditions in France are quite different to the traditions I'm used to in England. 


However, to start, I've decided to write a little bit about French Christmas songs and carols, after my friend Hannah kindly sent me a link to one earlier this month (we share an interest in both Christmas songs and French songs). 

Above is the one she sent to me, although she also told me that Édith Piaf did a version: 

After doing a bit of research, I found a few other songs that are apparently quite popular in France. 

I also found plenty of Christmas songs that are very popular in England that have been given French lyrics. My favourites are probably...


L'enfant au tambour (Little Drummer Boy)

and Vive le vent (Jingle Bells)

Hope you've all had a nice Christmas, I'll be posting again in the next few days.


Caitlin

Film Review #10- Lourdes

This film I ended up watching completely by accident. My parents are members of Love Film, the DVD rental website, and my mum ordered this one because it had won several awards. After she read me the synopsis, I admit that I wasn't too enthusiastic about watching this one, but the other day I was in the lounge and my mum decided to put it on, so we watched it together. 

For those of you who don't know, Lourdes is a small town in the French Pyrenees, and is the largest pilgrimage site in France. This is because it is believed that in 1858, eighteen apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes (supposedly the Virgin Mary) appeared to a local girl, Bernadette Soubirous. 

The film is about Christine, a young woman who is paralysed and goes on a pilgrimage to Lourdes with a group of people hoping to be cured of their various illnesses. 

I'm going to be completely honest and say straight away that I didn't enjoy this film very much. I'm glad I watched it but I wouldn't again- not a lot happened and personally I prefer films with more of a story line. The ending was very ambiguous as well, which annoyed me. 

In my opinion, the main thing that the film lacked was a strong main character. For me, Christine was a bit too quiet and didn't seem to be particularly affected by anything that was happening. I think that this was what gave the film it's slow pace and made it (in my opinion anyway) a little boring. 

I didn't dislike everything about Lourdes, though. The thing I most enjoyed about it was that it was quite funny in places, in a very subtle way. I also found it interesting that, although some of the characters were quite amusing, the film itself dealt with quite a serious topic, and the overall feel of it remained fairly serious too. 

So overall, as you may have guessed, I'm giving this film

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Caitlin

P.S. I can't find a trailer in any language other than German and Italian!