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.)

Ciné Midi du mois d'Août (August movies) :

"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.

Special French Table

Monday January 18th at 12:00 noon.

Join us on the beautiful 19th Floor of the Bellevue (200 S. Broad Street). Lunch is an appetizer buffet, a main course and a dessert buffet.

Reservations at $33 per members or $35 for non-members must be received in the office by January 15th. Price does not include wine. If you would like a glass of wine with your lunch, you may purchase it at that time.

New Class at the Alliance : A Journey Around France !

Richesses des terroirs

The Alliance Francaise invites you to join the first of a series of explorations of French provinces as "terroir". The term "terroir" considers land as an organism whose characteristics and products are intimately linked to the nature of its soil and the crafts of its people. A "terroir" appeals to your senses. It is a harmony of taste, smells, and feelings that are unique, exclusive and singular.

Our first exploration will be of La Touraine and Le Val de Loire




We will open with a presentation on Friday January 15th, 2010 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. This will include a short movie on the region. Presentation by Roseline Cousin, in English.

This will follow the initial presentation with 5 Tuesday meetings from January19 to February 16, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Some reading is expected for each meeting in order to allow sharing of ideas and discussions. We will get acquainted with the lore, the poetry, some aspects of the daily life and present concerns of the region. These meetings will be in French for intermediate and advanced levels and will be led by Roseline Cousin.

A special wine and cheese tasting held on Friday February 12 at 6:00 p.m. will be presented, in English.


$170 for Alliance Francaise members or $200 for non-members for the 3 events

You can also pick and choose which events you would like to attend :
- Presentation : $10 for AF members; $20 for non-members
- 5 meetings : $140 for AF members; $150 for non-members
- Wine and cheese tasting : $30 for AF members; $40 for non-members.

Ciné Midi en Janvier

"Joyeux Noël" (Tuesday, January 5th) : It is a 2005 film about the World War I Christmas truce of December 1914, depicted through the eyes of French, Scottish and German soldiers. The film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 78th Academy Awards. The film was one of Ian Richardson's last appearances before his death on February 9th, 2007.

"Le Père Noël est une Ordure" (Tuesday, January 12th) : It was a theatre piece, created in 1979 by the troupe Le Splendid. In 1982, Jean-Marie Poiré adapted it for the screen. A burlesque Christmas night where, at the duty office of a Parisian telephone station (SOS Friendship in distress), the volunteers are perturbed by the arrival of marginal characters and eccentrics who provoke a series of catastrophes.




"The Secrets" (2007) (Tuesday, January 19th) : Two brilliant young women discover their own voices in a repressive orthodox culture, where females are forbidden to sing, let alone speak out.





"Le Dîner de Cons" (1998) (Tuesday, January 26th) : The Dinner Game is a perfect example of well crafted French comedy with good timing. Directed by Francis Veber, known for La Cage aux Folles, the movie is an adaptation of a famous French play, "Le Dîner de Cons", featuring some of the actors of the original play. Each week, Pierre and his friends organize what is called as "un dîner de cons". Everyone bring the dumbest guy he could find as a guest. Pierre thinks his champ, François Pignon, will steal the show.