Hi I'm Caitlin. I created this blog about French culture because I love it, and because I wanted something to keep me busy over the summer.
Here you'll find reviews of French and francophone films, novels and music, French recipes, vlogs and more!
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.
(I normally call it La Mome, but I can't remember how to get the 'hat' on the 'o')
Just a word of warning before I begin. I love Edith Piaf. I love her. I love her songs. I love this film. So I may go a bit crazy at some point.
For those of you who don't know, La Vie en Rose is a "biopic" (I believe that's what they're called) about the life of Edith Piaf. It was made in 2007 and was directed by Olivier Dahan, starring Marion Cotillard as Edith.
I suppose the most interesting thing about this film is that it's not in chronological order, so it doesn't "plod" along. In fact, the first scene is set (I think) in 1959, which was towards the end of her life. For me, this is important because you can connect the older woman to the young child (and, believe me, she changes a lot). The contrast between the young and old Edith, in fact, is so great that it makes the film even more moving. I found the last part of the film particularly sad (both me and mum were blubbing along to the music; even my dad looked a bit upset), when the singer is dying and we are shown a clip of her younger self in the middle of a field, if I remember correctly. Writing this now, it doesn't sound, even to me, particularly upsetting, but it really is when you watch it.
Another thing I found interesting was Dahan's portrayal of Edith. I've heard (although I'm not sure if this is true or not) that he was not particularly a fan of the singer, and he certainly does not portray her as someone you'd want to be friends with. I think the audience is meant to feel sympathy for the younger Edith, but otherwise, she is not the most amiable of characters. In one scene, for example, she is in a restaurant with some friends, and demands that she is given a gift, either a diamond ring or free champagne. She's also often shown taking drugs, and drinking alcohol regularly. I like that about this film, though. It makes it more real, and if Dahan had wanted to portray her in a positive light, it would be too clichéd in my opinion
As I may have mentioned before, we discussed this film at my Monday film course (which is tonight, woopee!). I think the main issue that people had with it was that it completely missed out the war period. I'd never noticed this before, and now that I have, it's really annoying! This would, I think, be my only criticism of an otherwise amazing film. Even though Edith herself wouldn't have been very involved in the Second World War, it was still, obviously, a big part of life then, so I don't understand why Dahan hasn't included it.
Despite that, however, I still think that this film deserves ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
French Friday number 2. It's not in a video this week because I have no energy and if I tried to talk, I wouldn't make any sense.
So, what have I been up to this week?
Obviously, there was the film course on Monday. This week we talked about historical films; we watched Molière, Joyeux Noël and Laissez-Passer, all very good (the bits we watched anyway!). I've see Molière before, but not the other two. Watching the clip made me want to watch the entire film again, although I have two reviews to write up already so I might not watch it just yet. Joyeux Noël was also good; it looked like a very uplifting film, but I think I'll save that one for Christmas, and Laissez-Passer was interesting as well.
Last weekend, I downloaded the Le Monde app onto my phone. It's so useful because it doesn't use the Internet so if I have nothing to do at lunchtime at school, I can just read an article or two. And it sends me notifications when there's a new article, which is great. So far I've read about Greece, Steve Jobs (R.I.P. :( ) and a bit about the presidential elections in France. I've finally got my laptop sorted out too, and because I had to wipe everything off the computer, I decided to make my new home page Le Monde.fr.
I watched La Vie en Rose again last Saturday. I won't write too much about it right now, as I'm just writing a review right now, which should be up this weekend. It's one of my favourite films, so expect it to be hyper (if you can describe a film review as hyper).
I also just watched Priceless (or Hors de Prix in French). That review will hopefully be up this weekend as well, but I'm not 100% sure, depends how long my maths homework takes me on Sunday!
The only other thing I can think of is Fry's Planet Word. It's a TV program, I think it's on BBC1 at 8pm on Sunday, and it's about language. It's not really to do with French culture, or French, but it's really good, and really interesting.
That's all this week, I'll try and have those two reviews up asap! :)
(this post has been so picture-less, so I'm finishing with a happy picture)
So I'm still trying to figure out how my camera works. The holiday video is taking longer than expected. In between work, knitting and trying to get to grips with my video camera, I'm listening to a lot of Edith Piaf. I know, I know, I've posted about her before but my love for her music has developed since then, so I'm writing about her again, with some more of her songs that I have discovered.
As you probably know, it was my birthday last Saturday (the 27th), and my parents bought me a 3 disc album called "The Best of Edith Piaf". Naturally, it has been playing at full volume pretty much non-stop since then. I think my Dad's beginning to regret the present- he told me that all her music sounds the same (I replied by saying that that was just because he's rubbish at French). I have been listening to this album to such an extent, that I now actually know some lyrics, and find myself singing them in the shower. I also understand most of them. I even think that singing along to her songs might help me with my pronunciation (I'm not terrible at French, but I think my accent has room for improvement). Anyway, here are a few tracks that I have discovered over the past few days of non-stop listening:
That's just a few, I'm sure I'll have more in the next week or so! If you haven't heard Edith Piaf's songs before (well apart from Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien and La Vie En Rose) then listen to her, she has a fantastic voice.
Recently, I have really got into listening to Édith Piaf. I started listening to her after I first watched 'La Môme' (or 'La vie en rose'- such a gorgeous film by the way, I'd thoroughly recommend it).
Anyway, here are a few of my favourites. When I listen to her music, I just instantly think of Paris. It's so French- it's gorgeous. It's such a shame that she had such a short life.
I also wanted to put on 'Rien de rien' (as in: "Rien de rien, il ne se passe jamais rien pour moi, je me demande pourquoi), but when I typed it into Youtube, it just came up with 'Non, je ne regrette rien'.
Tell me what you think of her and her music :) and has anyone else watched the film?
