Oddfellow’s Casino – The Raven’s Empire

Beginning things with a locational bias, a nibble on a little Brighton-based eccentricity is perfect potion to get the coastal blood a-pumping. Described by Les Inrockuptibles as Britain’s answer to Sufjan Stevens, David Bramwell and his company of orchestrally inclined bandmates furnish us with Oddfellow’s fifth and newest album to ensure that 2012 is an Edward Gorey themed year. Expect the Brighton and Hove Concert Band, un-living memories of the West Pier before it became a stack of matchsticks, Victorian freakshows and vignettes, and the ghostly smell of pipe tobacco to assault the mind’s eye and ear.

Karen Dalton – 1966

Karen Dalton came back on the scene posthumously around 2008 after her last release, In My Own Time, in 1971. The latest Dalton-shaped offering comes in the form of never-before heard, recently unearthed tracks, featuring cover versions of songs by the likes of Fred Neil and Tim Hardin. Latterly recognised as one of folk’s most important voices, Dalton, if she were alive today, would stand shoulder to shoulder with the aforementioned heavyweights plus Bob Dylan, who credits her as an inspiration for his own career. Gravelly, raw and oh so folky, if that classic Greenwich Village vibe is your thing, you need 1966 in your life.

Hooded Fang - Tosta Mista

I love – LOVE I tell ye – that garage surf thing, so with all of this classic reverb going on, surf guitar and  ’60s style drum breaks, I think I might have found a new obsession. But behind all the elevating this and that, this record actually has quite a sad concept behind it all: surprisingly it documents the disintegration of the Hooded Fang’s Daniel Lee and April Aliermo’s five-year relationship. Stand out track ‘Den Of Love’ supposedly typifies it all. Whatevs, heartbreak or not, Tosta Mista has been described as “the whole of the Nuggets box set condensed into an album that’s just 23 minutes long.” That’s a win on my watch.

Department of Eagles – The Cold Nose

From The Department of Eagles, The Cold Nose is a re-release seven years after its original outing. What 2012 has that 2005 didn’t is up for speculation, but what this record has that 2005′s version didn’t is six bonus tracks, featuring remixes from Tunng and Deadelus. That’s a whopping 19 tracks to get stuck into! What’s it like? Well, if the kind of thing DJ Shadow does floats your boat, then you might be setting merry sail. Time Out, however, have another specific on it all: “Imagine if Thom Yorke woke up one sunny spring morning and realised that actually, everything was going to be OK after all.” Imagine if he did! 1997 would have sounded very different…

Diagrams – Black Light

One man show, Sam Genders, otherwise known as Diagrams, serves up audio delights with his debut album. Truth be told, I was expecting a well-synthy, wanky LP (I confess; I judged a book by its cover). But pleasantly, where it is a bit synthy now and then, it’s not wanky. It’s actually pretty lyrically rich, and in places, bluesy, funk-peppered and psych (the old and new variety) a-plenty. Diagrams has been likened to Hot Chip and Metronomy, which I think is where I formulated my preconceptions, but quite wonderfully – and strangely – The Guardian had this to say about Mr Genders’ work: “Like Sufjan Stevens and a parliament of owls in a feathery group hug, happily tumbling down an upwards escalator in slow motion.”

Duris: an emotionally raw performance

Based on Douglas Kennedy’s debut novel, The Big Picture is a emotionally charged thriller with a star-studded cast. At first glance, it looks like that Paul (Romain Duris) has everything: a beautiful wife Sarah (Marina Foïs), a loving family, and a successful partnership at a Parisian law firm. But it is not long before the cracks in his seemingly perfect life begin to show.

Sarah, a failing writer and stay-at-home mother, feels trapped in her domestic bubble and neglected by her overworked husband. He resents her unhappiness, having built a stable career and given up his own dreams so that she could pursue hers. Their world is turned upside down when Paul discovers his wife is having an affair with their neighbour, photographer Greg (Eric Ruf). A heated confrontation between the men ends suddenly with Greg’s death and Paul is left to deal with the consequences.

In a series of pacey, stomach-churningly tense scenes Paul assumes Greg’s identity and flees to Montenegro to pursue his secret passion for photography. But not before taking time to fake his own death in a boating accident and dump Greg’s body along the way.

It’s an emotionally raw performance from Duris, one to rival his César nomination for Best Actor in The Beat That My Heart Skipped. If only there was an award for most expressive eyes, it would surely be his: from the deepest fear when confronted by the police to sheer heartache when leaving his children for the last time, they really do say it all. Proof again that Duris is much better suited to playing a tormented man than his wishy washy lead roles in the odd chick flick. Throughout the entire film the camera never leaves Paul’s side, journeying with him through ups and downs as he tries to start again and forget the past that haunts him.

His character undergoes profound change in the film which Duris portrays both physically and emotionally. This was aided in large part by the chronological filming schedule mastermined by director Eric Lartigau. Long journeys driving from country to country and filming along the way enabled Duris to fully embody his character’s development. Duris’ performance is enhanced by his electrifying chemistry with legendary co-stars Niels Arestrup and Catherine Deneuve.

An emotional rollercoaster with plot twists throughout, we are left wondering whether Paul with ever escape the consequences of his actions and begin truly living again.

The Big Picture was released on DVD by Artificial Eye, and is available to buy online here.

The trailer for Eric Lartigau’s The Big Picture

Elaine Dundy can write her sexy ass off...

Don’t worry – it’s not like I’m in love with Angelina Jolie or anything. No cheesy-cliché-typical straight girl/sickly-stickly-starlet lesbian love affair fantasies pour moi — I’m different. (Besides, as far as starstruck starlet-inspired lesbian love affair fantasies go, I’m more of a Rose McGowan girlcrush girl myself.) (It’s her aura of dirty-hot whisky sex that does it for me.)

En plus ? My woman that I’m in love with? With the uncle I also have the hots for? Uhm, she’s dead. Has been for a few years. So there’s that too.

The thing about Elaine Dundy is that while she most certainly was a woman, she was most certainly not a lady. Nor a chick or a gal or even a dame. Elaine Dundy? She was a Broad. In the biggest, boldest, broadest, Broad-iest sense. She was sex and the city four long decades before “Sex and the City” (but not, of course, before sex, or cities, or desperate housewives). She was sex and a single girl when they’d already invented both sex and girls, but of all the sexy single girls, she really knew how to pull it off. You know – in that lusty-boozy-busty-Broad(y) kind of way. Which is why I love her. Wouldn’t you?

Oh, and another other thing about Elaine Dundy? She could write her sexy ass off.

I met her here in Paris. (Well, O.K., so I didn’t really meet her-meet her, her being dead and all, but you know…) I met her through her novel, The Dud Avocado. (Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, but once you read the book you’ll get the title.) There she is “…drifting down the Boulevard St. Michel, thoughts rising in [her] head like little puffs of smoke…”  Eleven o’clock in the morning, and she’s wearing an evening dress as brazenly as if it was still eleven o’clock in the evening. (Holly Golightly be damned, when Capote would eventually create her years later.) She was doing what ladies call the Walk Of Shame and what broads call the Stride Of Pride. Anyway, that’s what I’d like to believe. Wouldn’t you?

This was la Belle Époque. Well, not the real Belle Époque (it being the 1950s and all), but back when francs were such soft currency they smelled strongly of fromage, back when the euro didn’t even exist, let alone teeter on the cheese-plate of extinction, like Camembert left outside on a summer luncheon table. Back when American trust-fund babies and G.I. Bill babies and American students and American scholars and American beatniks and their even more horrifying British counterparts tore up the Left Bank (where all the wrong ones, or their ungodly grandchildren, still have their pied à terres) playing make-believe bohemians like the privileged brats that they were. And life was fabulous. Formidable. Fromage-y. Truly, really, la Vie en Rose, la Belle Époque, the Banquet Years. This was Elaine Dundy’s world, she was a part of all this, tearing up far more than her share. Makes me kinda jealous as hell. Et vous ?

Elaine Dundy (and/or Sally Jay Gorce, her fictitious/autobiographical protagoniste) was a part of all this…and yet somehow she wasn’t. While she hung out with her compatriots, she found them more than kind of annoying too: “A rowdy bunch on the whole, they were most of them so violently individualistic as to be practically interchangeable…The ones who Did Anything (and there were plenty not averse to Taking It Easy – or whatever the course was called at the Sorbonne), mostly painted. That any of them would actually be talented had never occurred to me…” Of course, mais oui, this didn’t stop her from letting them buy her drinks, or even sleeping with them, and sometimes even talking with them, of which I honestly, thirstily, wholeheartedly, hornily approve. Et vous ?

The back jacket blurb on my edition of The Dud Avocado bills her novel, her unexpected, unprecedented first novel like this: “…Dyeing her hair pink and vowing to go native in a way none of the natives can manage, she’s busy getting drunk, bedding men, losing money, losing jewellery, and losing God knows what…” (Oops – forgot to tell you before: She dyed her hair pink.) (In the Fifties.) (Pink!) (Long before there was Manic Panic.) (Paris!) (Pink!!) As far as book-pimping book-jacket blurbs go, this one bombs: Elaine Dundy may have lost her pearl necklace, her passport, and even her pinky-pink virginity, but in reality (fictitious or autobiographical or otherwise), she didn’t lose a pink thing. She gained. She gained so much more. (And what the hell’s wrong with losing your virginity anyway?) (And why do we call it “losing” in the first place?) (What the – pardon the pun – fuck?) (As opposed to your house keys, which are important —  when was the last time you went hunting between the cushions for your virginity?) (How much does it weigh, anyway? Can we total it up as weight-loss?)

“I want my freedom!” a not-quite-but-almost-nearly 13-year-old Sally Jay (Elaine Dundy’s autobiographical etc.) protests to her Uncle Roger. (Uncle Roger’s the guy who eventually ends up funding her séjour in Paris.) (Because Uncle Roger’s filthy-stinking rich.) (Dear Old Uncle Roger.) (Let it be said: Along with Elaine Dundy, I’m kind of in love with Uncle Roger, too.) “Your freedom? Ah yes, of course. What are you planning to do with it?” inquires Tonton Rog, all wisdom and wryness and wit. (He’s so hot.) “I want to stay out as late as I like and eat whatever I like any time I want to…I think if I had my freedom I wouldn’t allow myself to get introduced to all the mothers and fathers and brothers of the girls at school…I wouldn’t get introduced to anyone. I’ve never wanted to meet anyone I’ve been introduced to. I want to meet all of the other people…” (I’m so hotly-hot for him.)

An unexpected, unprecedented first novel

Freedom. Call up any woman in any city – like Pittsburgh or Poughkeepsie or Pemberton or Paris (Texas) – and tell them that you live in Paris (France). They sigh. Loudly. Plaintively. Parisian-ly, as best they can. And then they go silent. You can hear them rifling through their Rolodex for a divorce lawyer. Or for the number of their own Uncle Roger. Ahh, freedom. Always easier to attain with a chequebook-wielding Uncle Roger in the wings, bien entendu. But . . . freedom. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? (Ahem, Uncle Roger….??)

“All the outrageous things my heroine does like wearing an evening dress in the middle of the day are autobiographical,” she told the Elvis Information Network. (Yeah, I know – but it makes sense because later on she wrote a book on Elvis.) (And in the context of contemporary journalism, how can the EIN not be at least as credible a source as….well, fill in the acronym.) “All the sensible things she does are not.”

Elaine Dundy went on to be free and then not free and then free again, and sensible and unsensible and probably insensibly unsensibly sensible too. There was a failed marriage (he was a famous theatre critic, incredibly so, and sounds like he was a jerk, incredibly so too), and a daughter, and acting stints, and more books, and splashy cocktails with Orson Welles and Tennessee Williams and Laurence Olivier and Vivian Leigh in between. But as for Paris? A girl gets the impression that it was here that she figured it all – or at least the most important stuff – out.

“It was around then, in Paris, that I became aware of something about myself only previously suspected,” Dundy wrote, writing about her writing The Dud Avocado. (Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I KNOW…but this is what happens when you let your jerky jealous critic husband title your genius first novel.) “I had an alter ego, a second self, a not so ghostly increasingly intrusive highly comic character whom I had to acknowledge. In fact whose presence I could no longer deny. I had to accept her, had to give her space, for she would pop up getting things wrong when I least expected her to…” You’ve probably met that bitch, haven’t you? Isn’t she your best, bestest friend? Elaine was so lucky — she met her when she was so young, and so very much in Paris.

The back jacket blurb on my edition of The Dud Avocado gets one thing right. It describes Elaine Dundy’s fictitious/autobiographicalprotagoniste as “…a woman hellbent on living.” She was, certainly, but I’d go further: Elaine Dundy/Sally Jay Gorce was too much. Much too much. And that’s why I love her/her. Ladies: Girls: My Bitches: Ever been told you’re too much? Of course you have. Know what? At the risk of sounding preachy? In that annoying self-helpy-sounding preachy sense? Be too much, too too much, much too too much, and then be that much more. Because even when we’re not being too much, they’re gonna tell us we’re too much anyway. So why not go all the way?

I’m quite sure that’s what Elaine Dundy would’ve wanted.

And Uncle Roger, too.

Scarlett Thomas' Our Tragic Universe

I commute for work one hour each side of every weekday. Most people think that I’m mad to do this. The truth is, and it’s a controversial statement to make, I really like commuting. The reason being that it gives me time to read (though most of the time with the elbow of a fellow passenger firmly lodged just under my ribs), and so those two hours of my day have become very important to me.

Throughout this series of articles I will be reviewing a broad range of books written by women in Europe that are good to read whilst commuting. The first book I’ve selected for review is a novel, Our Tragic Universe, by the English writer Scarlett Thomas.

The book was brought to my attention when it was thrust into my hands a couple of weeks ago by a friend, who hadn’t yet read it and wouldn’t have time to read it for a while, so perhaps, would I like to read it? I took it, having not read anything by Thomas before, nor read any reviews of the book, nor been offered a personal recommendation. But the pages were edged with black and there was a quote from Philip Pullman on the front declaring that it was ‘a delight’. That was enough for me.

Our Tragic Universe was not what I expected from the blurb on the back, which made it out to be a sort of mystery adventure. In fact the book, which is predominantly about writing a novel, is constructed of various narrative strands that are spun through the main character, Meg.

Our Tragic Universe is a non-linear novel. It is built up of stories from Meg’s past, the pursuit of lines of thought, conversations held between friends on philosophy, literature, science; emotions felt at the beginning, middle and – inevitably – the end of relationships. It doesn’t rely on the exploits of a hero, a fixed morality, or one final resolution. Instead it is constructed of a multitude of elements that spark off each other, almost in the manner of a storyless story, which is one of the narrative aspects within the book.

Thomas’ prose is rich and her dialogue very human. I’m not sure whether it is a testament to the strength of her writing, or puts a question mark over the quality of my memory, but I have been in conversations where I’ve been close to hitting my head against objects around me in an attempt to recall which book I read about cultural premonitions, or some crazy idea about how, once the universe ends, all living things ever created will be perpetuated for eternity at Omega Point. I later remembered that these are elements within Thomas’ playful and very engaging book.

Our Tragic Universe is well suited to commuting. Whilst there are no chapters, there are plenty of marked breaks providing opportunity to put the book down. It is also very easy to pick back up again.

There is just one bit of the book that I’m still not entirely sure about; the paragraph on the reverse of the novel suggests that Meg finds a knitting pattern for the shape of the universe. Although Meg does knit in the book, it is socks that she learns how to make. Does this, then, suggest that the universe is shaped like a sock, or cosy feet? Or maybe a pair of hands holding four slim double pointed needles is knitting the universe in four-ply, continuously? I may just have to let that one go…

Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas is published by Canongate Books, and is available to buy online here.

If you would like to suggest any books (preferably by European women) for review, please let me know in the comments section.

An animation by the Oscar-winning Tandem Films to celebrate the launch of Scarlett Thomas’ novel Our Tragic Universe.

Jeremy Irvine with Joey in War Horse

War Horse is the ultimate love story. A love story with many facets: the love between a young boy and his horse; the love a mother has for her child; the love between two siblings, and the love of one’s country. The story is told through the innocent eyes of a horse called Joey and follows his incredible journey through World War I.

The film is clearly a comment on the sheer brutality and wastefulness of war. It opens the audience’s eyes not only to the human sacrifice, where an entire generation of young men lost their lives, but also to the scale of animal deaths and casualties. Ingeniously however, even as a war film, War Horse manages to remain family friendly; battle scenes, although brutal, take up only 10-15 minutes of the whole film and hardly any blood is shown throughout.

Michael Morpurgo‘s 1982 novel was originally adapted for the stage by Nick Stafford and is currently showing at The New London Theatre, where it continues to be extremely popular. War Horse is therefore a very British treasure. Director Steven Spielberg is very mindful of this and was keen to maintain the traditional British feel. With opening scenes roaming the beautiful Devonshire moors, a cast boasting top UK talent and a roaring reception at Sunday’s London premiere Spielberg has called War Horse his “first British film.”

War Horse has also brought a lot of firsts for 21-year-old Jeremy Irvine who plays protagonist, Albert Narracott; it’s his first major role, his first film and, surprisingly, his first time on horseback. After seeing the beautiful way he rides and his effortless communication with the horses throughout the film, this seems hard to believe. Asked why he chose Irvine for such a major role, Spielberg stated: “Nobody had the heart or the spirit or the communication skills that Jeremy had, even in silence without speaking.” It’s a promising comment from a film industry veteran and has been the beginning what promises to be an illustrious career for Irvine.

From Joey’s panic-stricken charge through No Man’s Land to the vivid sunsets in the final frame, there’s no denying the film’s beauty. While War Horse may not be everyone’s cup of tea, (it’s a tear-jerker with big musical numbers from John Williams, a horse that miraculously makes the right moral choice at every opportunity, rushed characterisation and a questionable French accent from an otherwise adorable little girl) the film is quite clearly crowd-pleasing Oscar material.

War Horse is released in the UK on January 13^th.

The trailer for Steven Spielberg’s War Horse

Michael Fassbender starring in Shame

Meet the protagonist of Shame, Brandon (Michael Fassbender) – he’s attractive, he’s successful, he’s charming. He’s also cool, calm and collected. Or is he?

Behind this controlled exterior is an insatiable, ever-expanding web of pornography, one-night stands and online sexual encounters. Like a swan gliding elegantly along the water’s surface, he’s paddling frantically underneath to keep his head above water and manage his sexual urges. His control truly starts to slip with the arrival of his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan). He fights, cries and goes on a night-long binge which can only end regrettably. Sissy, reckless and emotional, is the antithesis of her brother – bedding Brandon’s boss after her own messy break-up and physically scarred from self-harming.

We are given no explanation for the pair’s behaviour, only hints of a troubled youth. “We’re not bad people” Sissy pleads, “We just come from a bad place.” The film ends with no insight as to how either lives develop. There is no sense of closure. And this is the very beauty of Shame: its immediacy. It is not attempting to story tell, but to give a snapshot of two complicated lives.

It is a powerful and devastatingly honest erotic drama highlighting the overpowering nature of human addiction. Could we have expected anything less from the collaboration of Steve McQueen (Co-Writer and Director) and Fassbender that brought us Hunger in 2008? Probably not.

Its been described as the most daring and thought-provoking film of this year; in some of the most long-lasting, graphic sex-scenes to hit the big screen, the audience are truly ripped from their comfort zone. We are faced, over and over again, with the romping reality of such a serious and life-absorbing addiction.

After McQueen’s unique and refreshing direction together with emotionally raw performances from Fassbender and Mulligan, it is no wonder countless nominations keep flooding in.

Shame is released in the UK on January 13^th 2012.

The trailer for Shame

The Art of Colour: Georgia O’Keeffe

A year in art, music, cinema and literature features and there have been some fascinating, thought-provoking pieces on everything from banned books to cinema in Berlin. For your reading pleasure, we’ve rounded up the best of best; a look back over Culturelle in 2011…

Brits and the Boards: Women in UK Theatre

Alice Stride edits a go-to guide to the brightest and most brilliant women working in British theatre today: an inspiring must-read for any budding theatre-luvvies out there.

The Enigmatic Artists

Plum Woodard takes a look at five of music’s most enigmatic female artists, from rock and pop, soul to blues – and from ceaselessly out there to near on unknown…

The Art of Colour

In considering the works of celebrated artists, the exploration of the expressive use of colour can unveil ardent sensitivity and insight into some of the great masters in history and how they inspire us, even today. Kaiti Vartholomaios looks at the art of colour.

Ten of the Best… Historical Novels

As a fun and engaging way to learn about the past, historical novels offer more than your average ‘airport’ read. Viola Levy noses through ten of the best.

Street Art Now

Spray cans at the ready; SJP takes a look at the progression of street art, key artists and where you can see the best tags, bombs and burners…

Banned Books: The Novels You Weren’t Supposed to Read

Banned by governments, Brogan Driscoll presents an edit of some of the most famous outlawed titles – and a few that might surprise you.

Brushstrokes and Bitch Fits: Women who Changed Art

It’s certainly not that female artists don’t exist – it’s simply that they’re not given the wall space that their male counterparts are. Sandra Smiley considers ten key female figures from the art world…

Magathèque: Volume 20

It’s your final Magathèque and the best ever yet! To conclude two years of short film exploration,  Pippa Rimmer reminds you of some of the best shorts we’ve profiled…

On Location: Greece

It’s been a long time since Greece was one of the globe’s greatest exporters of culture, but that hasn’t stopped international production companies from turning its landscapes into cinematic starlets…Kaiti Vartholomaios explores the Greek cinematic landscape past and present.

Upper Class Reads

The fictional – and not so fictional – adventures of the rich and fabulous have fascinated readers for centuries, and it is hardly surprising, thinks Katie Byrne.

Running in Heels: Jasmine Cullingford – Artistic Director

Alice Revel  takes a peek behind the curtains and meets the lady who makes the on-stage magic happen at one of the UK’s most inspiring, eclectic arts venues.

Meet Diana Athill 

Speaking to Harri Sutherland-Kay , the legendary, award-winning British writer and editor adresses the important themes of writing, political activism, feminism, education, religion and the afterlife.

The Ex Factor Playlist

SJP presents your essential guide to the best break-up tracks of all time. Grab a bar of chocolate, arm yourself with tissues and press play to listen to the Ex Factor…

Work by artist Yolanda Dominguez

A Space to Write

Monique Rubinslooks at how a woman needs time, a means to live and her own space if she is to find form for the muddled – but wonderful – ideas that for too long have been buried somewhere at the back of her brain.

Blogging in Heels: Katy Evans-Bush – Baroque in Hackney

Alice Revel quizzes fascinating books and culture blogger Katy Evans-Bush about her sharp, witty musings on literature and London.

Bitches of the Big Screen

Audiences love them, actresses love playing them, the only question is why don’t we see more of them?! Victoria Todd give you our best Bitches of the Big Screen.

Meet Yolanda Domínguez

Jem McCarron meets the young Spanish artist, whose ground-breaking work investigates and challenges our gender conceptions through new, innovative art forms.

Cinematic Cities: Berlin

Continuing your cinematic journey of Europe, Francesca Robson takes you to a city which has inspired some of the most dedicated depictions on celluloid: Berlin

Beach Reads: The Guilty Pleasures

Unfold your towel, settle into the sunshine and enjoy the dog-eared pages. Alexia Healy chooses some of the best literary junk food for snacking pleasure!

Meet Rose Balston

Fran Harris talks classical treasures, architectural anecdotes and bringing London’s artistic heritage to life with the young, passionate founder of Art History UK.

Five of our Favourites… Northern Soul

Not so familiar with the genre? Plum Woodard takes a look five of top Northern soul tracks that are bound to get you spinning on your heels in no time…

The Magic of Writing: Patricia Duncker

Literary doyenne and idea aficionado Patricia Duncker speaks to Deirdra Eden Keane about love, suicide cults, literature festivals and everything in between…

One of our five Northern Soul picks, Dobie Gray’s Out On The Floor

Jean-Pierre Léaud as Antoine Doinel

It was a year long séjour in the City of Lights and undergraduate degree in French that led me straight into the arms of Monsieur Truffaut and a film I will watch over and over again. So grateful am I that I even begrudge my student loan an itsy bit less. I am not alone in my adoration that’s for sure; Les 400 Coups is cited by many as their favourite film of all time, winning François Truffaut a prize for Best Director at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, and gaining nominations for numerous other awards including a Palme D’Or, an Oscar and a BAFTA.

The film follows adolescent Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) and his struggle to free himself from the regimented stronghold of his parents, teachers and French institutions. It is semi-autobiographical of Truffaut’s childhood, where, faced with similar conflict he sought solace in life-long friendships. The partnership between Léaud and Truffaut itself spanned four further films (Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board,  Love on the Run, and the 1962 short subject, Antoine and Colette), each providing the next instalment of Doinel’s life.

Formerly a film critic, Les 400 Coups was Truffaut’s first feature film. Released in 1959 it went on to define La Nouvelle Vague (The New Wave), which is arguably one of the most influential of cinematic movements to date. New Wave directors broke free of the traditional methods of filmmaking, bridging the gap between art and reality; a change that, 50 years on, is easy to take for granted.

Truffaut and his peers rejected the plot-driven obsession and one-dimensional characters that characterised Hollywood cinema at the time, giving us realistic characters who didn’t adhere to the simple cause-and-effect formula audiences were so used to seeing. In the film we see Doinel’s life change dramatically from one moment to the next. He makes decisions in an instant: to run away from school, to run away from the juvenile detention centre, to play truant. His actions aren’t calculated, they are reactive. And that is what makes Doinel such a relatable character; the audience see their own childhood frustrations reflected in his.

Characterisation and plot weren’t the only way Truffaut & co bent the rules. They were as rebellious to classic film form as Doinel to his adult co-stars. The New Wave was a movement unafraid to remind the viewers that they were, well, viewers. In Les 400 Coups, Truffaut lingers on scenes that reinforce this; whether it be looking out on to a sea of toddlers’ faces as they enjoy a puppet show, or the aerial shot of school children dropping out of the sports teacher’s line as they run through Paris – they all serve to remind the audience of the filmmaking process and served to revolutionise cinema.

It is simple and beautifully shot film with a magnificent soundtrack by Jean Constantin. I challenge anyone to watch the first scenes and resist falling instantly head over heels in love with Paris. And with Antoine Doinel for that matter.

The trailer for Les 400 Coups

There are plenty of female artists in music we know heaps about; if not thanks to the wealth of gossip mags out there, thanks to publicity behemoths blowing gales of wind into their celebrity sails. But, equally, there are several who we know very little about. But it doesn’t just stop with knowing about them or not: they’re actually a tiny bit puzzling as well. Running In Heels takes a look at five of music’s most enigmatic female artists, from ceaselessly out there to near on unknown…

Lady Gaga

While Madonna and Rihanna failed to make the rundown, Lady Gaga gives them both a run for their money: from meat frocks to songs about Jesus’ disciples, what Gaga does next hardly finds itself filed under ‘predictable’. Previously, allusions to gender identity, while controversial in some places, only seemed to propel the world’s intrigue with one of pop’s most dramatic icons but the really fascinating thing about Lady G is that behind all the ‘neo-burlesque’ there’s a prodigy – at 20, she was employed by Sony to write songs for the likes of the Pussycat Dolls and Britney Spears. Kind of otherworldly in a Bowie kind of way, she’s single-handedly revolutionised popular music… And she’s still only 25.

Amy Winehouse

While rhapsodising the prematurely deceased is easy to do, Winehouse’s name is synonymous with soul – the musical variety and the tortured kind – and her latter performances when they happened had us on pins anticipating the next Amy Winehouse foible. Toward the end, her reputation both on and off stage hovered over the less favourable following arrests for abusing audience members and being too far intoxicated to perform at all. While the coroner’s verdict in October this year did deign alcohol to be the cause of her death at 27 after all, her followers were left short-changed after a brief glimmer of hope that she was finally managing to beat her demons. Fascinating while alive, Winehouse – and what might have been for her – now epitomises the enigma of the one that got away and smash sales of her posthumous album only serves as testament to this.

Patti Smith

One of music’s most androgynous chanteuses, Patti Smith gracefully managed to bring down the wall of stereotyping women in music. Nicknamed The Godmother of Punk, her boyish demeanour challenged conventions during her hey day during the ‘70s NYC punk scene. Her vocal style has since been tacitly tributed by the likes of The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O and her louche approach to her not-entirely-polished image holistically leading for a long register of contemporary female artists in music. Yet despite her forward-looking place amid female musicians, even as she continues to make her stamp in the present, Smith’s hook was that much of her output was largely unintended in terms of groundbreaking, deliberate statements: for a woman who recently described herself as “a bum”, Smith’s allure is that there’s nothing contrived about her career so far, and that’s what compounds her enigma – she’s effortless, something many take years trying to perfect.

Tori Amos

To this day, we still don’t know what a Cornflake Girl is. What we like about this woman is she probably doesn’t either. Flame haired and porcelain faced with exponentially structured cheekbones, Tori Amos properly bubbled up on the mainstream radar in 1996 with the ‘bedroom scent’ dance floor hit, Professional Widow. The track was some sidestep from her lyrically piano soaked norm and despite meriting award-winning acclaim in the early nineties, her album of ’96, Boys For Pele, featured sinister images of her breastfeeding a piglet and languidly nursing a shotgun. Influential and the recipient of a phalanx of awards and credits, Amos stays fastidiously out of the media limelight. What we do know is that she’s a close friend of Neil Gaiman – which speaks volumes over the whisper of mystery this singer-songwriter is shrouded in.

Karen Dalton

Commonly referred to as ‘folk’s answer to Billie Holiday’, Karen Dalton hasn’t been all that widely appreciated until relatively recently. An accompaniment and contemporary to the likes of Bob Dylan, Tim Hardin and Fred Neil, it was in 1960s New York where Karen was a stalwart of the Greenwich Village folk scene. Dalton died in 1993 from AIDS but although she’s been posthumously re-released to great acclaim nearly two decades following her death, and 40 years subsequently since her last living release in 1971, Dalton allegedly lived out her final years modestly and unremarkably. Put succinctly by the publicists managing her legacy, “Karen Dalton was a remote, mercurial creature… She instinctively understood that if she wanted to survive the harshness of the world around her, she would have to keep herself hidden.” In terms of one of the greatest folk singers of all time, no one is more enigmatic than one such many have never heard of. 1966, a collection of Dalton’s material freshly dug out, is released in January 2012.

Starring in We Need To Talk About Kevin

Up until a few years ago, the name Tilda Swinton was little known outside of art-house circles. Now her name is stretched across multiplex cinemas and her chiselled features are instantly recognisable to mainstream audiences.

Born into a Scottish aristocratic family and educated at Scottish and English boarding schools, she graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in English Literature. Originally hoping to become a writer, Swinton soon found a passion for acting at university and took part in countless stage productions. After graduating she had a brief stint at the Royal Shakespeare Company but, ever the non-conformist, she soon left finding it too restrictive.

Her longterm creative partnership with gay avant-garde filmmaker Derek Jarman swiftly followed. They met in the mid 1980s and bonded on their likeminded creativity and strong political views. They worked together on a string of revolutionary films, laying the groundwork for the New Queer Cinema of the 1990s. Swinton was very much his muse and it was their collaboration that allowed her to realise her passion for organic filmmaking.

In the years since Jarman’s tragic death from AIDS in 1994, Swinton has been involved in a variety of creative projects, each pushing her to a new extreme and harbouring new fans. Far from chasing the bright lights of Hollywood, she is just as content working with lesser-known directors or artists as she is starring alongside the likes of Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Leonardo Dicaprio (The Beach) or George Clooney (Michael Clayton). It is her distinct talent and fearless commitment that spurred on the success of these projects.

The collaboration with Luca Guadagnino on the beautiful and sexually charged I am Love, saw Swinton’s first production credit. Set in Milan at the turn of the new millennium, the story follows the bourgeois Recchi family as their lives are upturned by modernisation, lust and love. As the only non-Italian in the cast, Swinton’s lead performance as Emma Recchi is magnificent.

In addition to this undeniable talent, it is Swinton’s striking appearance that lends her to many roles. Androgynous with intense dark eyes and pale skin, she is perfectly cast as the White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or for her breath-taking performance as grieving mother Eva Khatchadourian in Lynne Ramsey’s We Need to Talk about Kevin. Before gracing blockbusters however, Swinton was best known for her lead role in Sally Potter’s Orlando, which was rereleased due to popular demand in July 2010. This remains one of her most powerful castings and arguably. An adaptation from Virginia Woolf’s novel of the same title, Queen Elizabeth I commands young Orlando to stay young forever. The film sees Swinton move seamlessly between several centuries, changing character and even gender along the way. It is a sterling performance that questions gender boundaries and allowed her to make her mark as one of the most talented actresses of her generation.

Her unusual looks, and enthusiasm and openness to new ideas have transcended her across various art forms. In 1995 Swinton was the subject of Cornelia Parker’s The Maybe at the Serpentine Gallery. The project involved Swinton sleeping in a glass box for eight hours a day, seven days a week. She is also fashion muse to Hussein Chalayan and Viktor & Rolf, and has modelled for luxury Scottish brand Pringle on three ad campaigns.

Swinton has certainly carved out a very unique place for herself, and as we look at her already pretty impressive career history we can’t help but ask ourselves: is there anything this woman can’t do?

Tilda Swinton in Sally Potter’1992 film Orlando