From Algeria, France, Belgium, writer-director Nadir Moknèche’s Viva Laldjérie—Long Live Algeria—encapsulates its theme in a clunkish symbol: in Algiers, the planned transformation of a shut-down cabaret, the Copacabana, into a mosque. Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise, destroying people’s lives when it isn’t taking people’s lives. This is hard on all those with the least […]
Daily Archives: September 12, 2008
There isn’t all that much to In Paris, an affecting comedy-drama about a family living under two shadows, divorce and, the deeper shadow for her parents and two brothers, the suicide of 17-year-old Claire. I am not going to write about this film, which contains a tribute to the nouvelle vague, except to say that […]
Dennis Grunes 