Thursday, December 23, 2010

Ciné Midi du mois de Janvier 2011
(January Movies)



L'Alliance Francaise organise tous les mardi midi une projection de films francais pour améliorer la compréhension orale de ses étudiants et favoriser leur connaissance en culture francaise. N'hésitez pas a venir découvrir les classiques du cinéma francais!!

The Alliance organizes french movies projections every tuesday at 12 to improve oral comprehension of the studients and to develop their knowledges about french culture...Do not hesitate to discover with us famous french movies!!




"The Secret" (Tuesday 01/04)

Naomi, the brilliant and pious daughter of an orthodox rabbi, finds herself at the crossroads of life choices when her mother dies and she is expected to marry her father's prodigy. She begs that her father allow her one year to study at a women's religious seminary in order to prepare for sacrifices she will make as a wife and her father relents.
Devout yet lively, her life begins to take an unexpected turn as she and her new school mate, Michelle, befriend a beautiful, mysterious older woman, Anouk (Fanny Ardant), who lives nearby, who may not be Jewish, is ill, and may be guilty of a crime of passion. Naomi devises a series of rituals which will somehow purge Anouk of her sins. Eventually this journeys into the forbidden and leads to a growing attraction between the two girls and more crossroads are faced.

This movie explores the complexities of a religious lifestyle in a vibrant environment of youth, rebellion and desire.




"Avenue Montaigne" (Tuesday 01/11)
This movie centers around Jessica (Cécile de France), a beautiful young woman from the provinces who comes to Paris and lands a job waiting tables at a chic bistrot on fabled Avenue Montaigne, the city's nexus for art, music, theater and fashion. Jessica's customers include a popular TV actress (Valérie Lemercier) who is courting a major Hollywood director (Sydney Pollack) for her first serious film role ; a wealthy art collector (Claude Brasseur) who is about to liquidate a lifetime's worth of treasures at auction ; and an illustrious classical pianist (Albert Dupontel) who is at odds with his manager/wife (Laura Morante) as to where his career is headed.
Precisely because Jessica doesn't know how celebrated these people are, her guileless and completely unintimidated engagement in their lives has a transforming effect on them - an ultimately her.


"La Grande Vadrouille" (Tuesday 01/18)

During World War II... When their combat aircraft is shot down by the Germans, three English airmen parachute to the comparative safety of Nazi occupied France. One lands on the scaffold of an amiable painter and decorator, Augustin. Another lands on top of a concert hall and is rescued by the irascible but patriotic conductor Stanislas Lefort. The third ends up in the otter enclosure in a Parisian zoo. When they try to help the airmen keep a rendez-vous at the Turkish baths in Paris, Augustin and Stanislas quickly find that they themselves have become targets for the German soldiers. Assisted by the daughter of a puppeteer and an anti-German nun, the two unwilling heroes accompany the three airman on a reckless trek across France towards the neutral zone and safety.




"Odette Toulemonde" (Tuesday 01/25)

Catherine Frot is Odette an ordinary woman, a mother of two children, working at a department store. She loves more than anything reading books by bestselling novelist Balthazar Balsan (Albert Dupontel). But Balthazar is not a happy man; his recent book is ridiculed and treated as a trash by a sneering critic, who, Balthazar knows soon, is having an affair with his wife! Heartbroken Balthazar finds consolation in a most unexpected place, however: a letter from Odette, most devoted fan of the writer, which leads him to her and a new life.



Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Fête de Noël!

Friday, December 17, 6:00 - 8:00 pm at the Alliance Française


Join us as we celebrate the holiday season with our annual Fête de Noël. There will be French Carols, a roast pig, bûches de Noël and other delicious foods and wine... Le père Noël might make an appearance if we have enough children attending.





Free for members of the Alliance Française
and $20 for non-members

Please call us or send us an email to let us know if you plan to attend.


Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Ciné Midi du mois d'Octobre 2010
(October Movies)



L'Alliance Francaise organise tous les mardi midi une projection de films francais pour améliorer la compréhension orale de ses étudiants et favoriser leur connaissance en culture francaise.N'hésitez pas a venir découvrir les classiques du cinéma francais!!
The Alliance organizes french movies projections every tuesday at 12 to improve oral comprehension of the studients and to develop their knowledges about french culture...Do not hesitate to discover with us famous french movies!!




"Côte d'Azur" (Tuesday 10/05)
Sexual and romantic complications turn into a hilarious comedy, when Marc (Melki) takes his wife Béatrix (Tedeschi) and their two teenage children to the Mediterranean house of his youth.
The daughter Laura 19, has a rendezvous with her biker boyfriend, and the son, Charly 17, roams the seaside with his best friend Martin who has a crush on him. Béatrix, sensitive to the situation, presumes her son is gay too. When her lover unexpectedly turns up, and Marc’s old flame appears, complications escalate into a historical explosion of pansexual interludes!





"Vipère au poing" (Tuesday 10/12)

In the Twenties, the young Jean Rezeau and his older brother Freddie are living a life of paradise on the grandmother estate in Brittany, when she suddenly dies. Their parents return from Indochina and the boys are forced to live once again with their parents and their other sibling. Unsurprisingly, they soon learn that life with their domineering, authoritarian mother Paule is a far cry from their loving, good-hearted grandmother.
Their father, Jacques is content to let Paule run the show and let him collect his precious flies. Both Jean and Freddie endure bullying, punishments and unjust abuse until Jean rebels and enlists his brother to help wage a humorous yet vicious war against the oppressive matriarchal tyranny.






"Ensemble c'est tout" (Tuesday 10/19)

Camille (Audrey Tautou) works evenings as an office cleaning woman, and makes graceful drawings in her free time, living in the attic of a Parisian apartment block.
Philibert (Laurent Stocker) is a young, aristocratic history buff living - temporarily - in an apartment lower down, part of the estate of his late grandmother. He has let out part of it to up and coming cook Franck (Guillaume Canet), a gruff young loner and womaniser with a genuine love for his frail grandmother, Paulette (Francoise Bertin). When Camille falls ill, Philibert insists she stay with the two of them so he can look after her. And even though she and Franck clash, the trio manage to live together and learn from each other.




"Indochine" (Tuesday 10/26)

Regis Wargnier’s epic about French Indochina - from the years of French colonial imperialism to the days when American presence made itself felt and the country became known as Vietnam -is a story of romance and separation told through the backdrop of a country in turmoil.
The film centers on the relationship of the beautiful and imperious Eliane, a French rubber-plantation owner, and Camille, her adopted Indochinese daughter. The mother and daughter are very close until a diffident naval officer, Jean-Baptiste enters their lives. Eliane is in love with him, but Jean-Baptiste and Camille become attracted to each other and fall in love. Thinking that she is doing Camille a favor, Eliane arranges to have Jean-Baptiste transferred to the far-away Tonkin Islands. But Camille flees the plantation to go to the man she loves….

Monday, August 30, 2010


Ciné Midi du mois de Septembre 2010
(September Movies)




L'Alliance Francaise organise tous les mardi midi une projection de films francais pour améliorer la compréhension orale de ses étudiants et favoriser leur connaissance en culture francaise.
N'hésitez pas a venir découvrir les classiques du cinéma francais!!

The Alliance organizes french movies projections every tuesday at 12 to improve oral comprehension of the studients and to develop their knowledges about french culture...
Do not hesitate to discover with us famous french movies!!








"Cliente"
(Tuesday 09/07)
Judith, a well-conserved middle-aged teleshopping anchorwoman, has vowed since her divorce to never get romantically involved again. To that end, she often hires escort-boys, which only her older sister, a divorcee still hoping to meet the love of her life, knows about. When Judith meets Patrick, an attractive semi-pro, she finds herself falling for him. However, Patrick's real name is Marco, who happens to be a married man pretending to work in construction in order to support his wife's recently-opened hair salon.






"The Umbrellas of Cherbourg"
(Tuesday 09/14)
Jacques Demy elevates the basic drama of everyday life into a soaring opera full of bittersweet passion and playful charm, featuring a timeless performance from Catherine Deneuve.
A young woman working in an umbrella shop becomes pregnant with the child of a mechanic she fell for. When he joins the military and goes off to war, she marries a wealthier young man to provide security for herself and her child.






"The Promised Life"
(Tuesday 09/21)
Sylvia is a prostitute in Nice, with a self-protective talent for blocking out huge chunks of her past. When her 14-year-old daughter, Laurence, skips out on foster care to see her biological mom, Sylvia is rudely dismissive. In an episode of bad timing, Laurence ends up stabbing a pimp in Sylvia's apartment. Estranged mother and daughter beat a hasty retreat heading north via train, bus and the kindness of strangers to reunite with the husband and 8-year-old son she skipped out on after the boy's birth landed her in a psychiatric hospital. Sylvia's heartbreaking and perhaps impossible goal is nothing short of trying to put all the things that have come apart in her life back together again.





"The Last Metro" (Tuesday 09/28)
The Last Metro is set virtually in its entirety in a crumbling French theatre. During the Nazi occupation, Jewish director Lucas Steiner hides in the basement of the theatre, while his wife Marion stars in its latest production. Marion is enamored of leading man Bernard Granger, and he with her, but they resist temptation out of respect to her husband. When she is given a choice between loyalty to her husband and to her countrymen, her dilemma offers two logical solutions--both of which are acted out on stage during the play. This Pirandellian ending aside, The Last Metro is one of the few films to accurately capture the feeling of what it was like to live in Paris under the thumb of the Nazis.



Tous les mardis a midi!! (Vous pouvez prendre votre dejeuner.)

Thursday, August 5, 2010





"My Wife is an Actress" (Tuesday 08/10) :
French actors and real life couple Yvan Attal and Charlotte Gainsbourg star in this chic, sexy romantic comedy about an actress and her jealous husband. Successful sportswriter Yvan and popular film star Charlotte enjoy a glamourous, sophiticated lifestyle in Paris. But when Charlotte relocates to London to star in a sexy movie opposite legendary ladies' man John, Yvan panics and travels back and forth from Paris to London to check on his wife....



"Le Pianiste"
(Tuesday 08/17) :
A brilliant pianist, a Polish Jew, witnesses the restrictions Nazis place on Jews in the Polish capital, from restricted access to the building of the Warsaw ghetto. As his family is rounded up to be shipped off to the Nazi labor camps, he escapes deportation and eludes capture by living in the ruins of Warsaw...



"L'Auberge Espagnole"
(Tuesday 08/24) :
As part of a job that he is promised, Xavier, an economics student in his twenties, signs on to a European exchange program in order to gain working knowledge of the Spanish language. Promising that they'll remain close, he says farewell to his loving girlfriend, then heads to Barcelona. Following his arrival, Xavier is soon thrust into a cultural melting pot when he moves into an apartment full of international students. An Italian, an English girl, a boy from Denmark, a young girl from Belgium, a German and a girl from Tarragona all join him in a series of adventures that serve as an initiation to life.

Remark : This movie is without subtitles.




"The Barbarian Invasions" (Tuesday 08/31) :
In this belated sequel to 'The Decline of the American Empire', 50-something Montreal college professor, Remy, learns that he is dying of liver cancer. He decides to make amends meet to his friends and family before he dies. He first tries to made peace with his ex-wife Louise, who asks their estranged son Sebastian, a successful businessman living in London, to come home. Sebastian makes the impossible happen, using his contacts and disrupting the entire Canadian system in every way possible to help his father fight his terminal illness to the bitter end, while he also tries to reunite his former friends, Pierre, Alain, Dominique, Diane, and Claude to see their old friend before he passes on.