Monica Bellucci

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italian private view villa with private pool, acreage grapes & olives (tuscany/umbria, italy) 3bd

As featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, Casa Verde is a charming, rural, private, independent (not attached) country house nestled high in the chestnut forests on the Tuscan/Umbrian border. The old stone construction and exposed beam ceilings afford the charm of yesteryear in this beautifully restored, two-story, two to three bedroom, non-smoking home. Here is a slideshow: http://adobe.kodakgallery.com/tuscanyvilla/main/casa_verde The furnishings include antiques and wonderful reproductions. Other furnishings are tasteful and appropriate to the simple elegance of an Italian farmhouse. The kitchen contains a typical gas stove/oven and a wood-burning oven, and you will find all the tools necessary for you to prepare your own Tuscan cuisine. The home features all the modern conveniences, including a washing machine and central heating. This home is perfect for two couples, or a family of four or five. In a pinch it can sleep six (there is a small Den/Third bedroom [six and a half feet by ten feet] overlooking the pool that has a sofa which folds down on the sides to serve as a single bed -- and there is a sofa (not sofa bed) in living room which does not fold down). The house itself is approximately 1500 square feet. Outside and attached to the main living area, a classic pergola of burnished wood construction offers shade and comfort for a relaxing breakfast while you plan your daily activities, or take a quiet afternoon nap as you escape the wondrous Italian sunshine. Better yet, sip a glass of limoncello in the night air before bed. There are also a number of outdoor seating and lounging areas spread across the property, vineyard, grove and pool area, including a hammock -- all for your private enjoyment. Nearby are friendly Italian neighbors and working farms, allowing you to enjoy the sights and sounds of rural Italy. You will be amazed at the incredible flavor of the chestnut honey produced on the adjacent farm, and the wonderful fruit and nuts (grapes, cherries, apples, figs, plums, persimmon, almond, chestnut and hazelnut) growing on your own acreage. There is even a vegetable garden and herbs galore. Don't be surprised if you spot roosters, ducks, geese, guinea hens and bee hives on the closest neighbor's property. They have the most wonderful produce, which they may even be willing to sell to you. Imagine, fresh eggs and chestnut infused honey delivered to your door for your morning breakfast! Take hikes in the pristine countryside along a beautiful mountain stream to a renovated mill, or up Mount Civitella to find a view of the entire province. Visit perfect hill towns nearby such as Citerna, Anghiari, Montone and Monte Santa Maria Tiberina. You are only eight kilometers minutes from Monterchi, the Tuscan town famous for Piero della Francescas Madonna del Parto, and an important stop on the Piero della Francesco trail. Listed by Thames & Hudson's "The Most Beautiful Villages in Tuscany," it is truly a gem and has a number of nice stores and restaurants. And the closest town of all (and most picturesque, we think) is Lippiano (just three and a half kilometers away) which boasts perfect Italian architecture, a sweet piazza and an imposing castle. Also nearby (30 minutes) is Caprese Michelangelo, birthplace of the world's most renowned artist. Visit his home and the church where he was baptized (which are both open to the public). Also within 15 minutes from your door is Sansepolcro and Citta di Castello (home of the gorgeous actress Monica Bellucci). Just 25 minutes away is Arezzo, the county seat, where "Life is Beautiful" was filmed and home of the largest antique market in the country (the first weekend of every month.) Sample the olive oil, the local vintages, and visit some of the outstanding restaurants and museums located in the nearby hill towns. You will be amazed at the taste of the wonderful grapes (white and red), olives and fruit and nut trees (cherries, apples, figs, pear, plums, persimmon, almond, chestnut and hazelnut) all growing on your own property. Oh yes, and did we mention the incredible views? The Private Pool? It is 16 x 32 feet. Quite large by Italian standards. And it is all yours. No sharing with other families. Very few, if any independent villas in Tuscany have a private pool, incredible views and acreage at this price! We haven't found any. That's why we bought the place for our eventual retirement. Casa Verde - Sleeps five to six, maximum Second Floor: There are two bedrooms on this floor ( both queen beds- cannot be made into twins) and one bathroom with shower, commode, washing machine and bidet. The bedrooms and the bathroom have exquisite views. First Floor: The first floor is done with an open floor plan, so that the kitchen, dining area and living area all have views of the fireplace. There is also a very bright but small (six and one-half feet by ten feet) private den with vaulted ceilings (which can become a private single bedroom with a sofa that folds down on the sides to make a single bed). The den has beautiful views of the pool and countryside. A second bathroom with shower rounds out the first floor. This bathroom can be accessed from the outside (but not from the inside) for convenience to the pool. The dining room table can be expanded to seat as many as six people and the living area has a reclining chair, TV, satellite dish, VCR and sofa (not sofa bed ) that can sleeps one person in a pinch. Did we mention the fireplace in the living room? Location, Location, Location From Casa Verde, you are only 15 kilometers minutes from the provincial city of Citta di Castello (population 30,000). Take a break at one of the open-air cafes that grace the piazza, and you will have the pleasure of people watching as you participate in a centuries old Italian tradition. For recreation, beautiful hiking trails abound in your own backyard. Golf, horseback riding and tennis are also within 10-12 kilometers of your home. It doesn't get any better than this! Touring Ideas In The Area of The Villa Sansepolcro/Citta di Castello - 15 minutes Arezzo - 25 minutes Cortona - 45 minutes Umbertide - 25 minutes Gubbio - 45 minutes Assisi - 1 hour Florence - 1.25 hours Siena - 1.5 hours; all within easy reach for a day trip! Amenities: Exquisite countryside views, Private pool with view, Fireplace, Satellite TV, VCR and dozens of videos, Stereo/CD Player and dozens of CDs, Full Kitchen, Refrigerator, Gas Stove and Wood Burning Pizza/Bread oven, Cooking Utensils provided, Linens provided, Washing Machine, Private Pool, No Smoking Pet Friendly Activities (on site or nearby): Hiking, Biking, Golf, Tennis, Fishing, Hunting, Wildlife Viewing, Horseback Riding, Restaurants, Live Theater, Cinemas, Museums, Sightseeing, Swimming, Boating, Sailing, Water-skiing, Windsurfing, Rafting Rates (in US Dollars): Personal Currency Assistant™ Credit Cards Accepted: June 27-August 29 ......................................$1950/week May 2-June 27 and Aug 29-Sep 26 .......................$1600/week September 26-Oct 31, 2008 and April 11-May 2 ...........$1250/week Oct 31- Nov 28 and March 14-April 11 ..................$950/week Property by the week only ...... Saturday 4 pm-Saturday 9 am. Guests not required to stay entire time. $500 Damage Deposit; pool open begining of May to end of Sept. 5% off rentals 2 weeks or more. . $80Euro cleaning Note: Until confirmed, rates are subject to change without notice. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Viv Groskop meets Olga Rodionova, the Russian wife who aims to please

The moment Olga Rodionova enters Moscow's Vogue Café there is a change in the atmosphere. All the men shift in their seats, their heads raised appreciatively, almost inhaling her. Several make as if to stand up as this six-foot Amazonian redhead sweeps through the room.Olga Rodionova, 34, is a TV presenter, model, actress, businesswoman and the third wife of Sergey Rodionov, a banker and publisher in his late forties who describes himself modestly as one of the poorest oligarchs. They have a 13-year-old daughter. They are best-known, however, in Moscow circles for their unusual hobby. Sergey likes to pay famous photographers to take pictures of his wife in the nude.We meet to talk about her latest incarnation as the star of The Book of Olga. This is a collection of erotic portraits by the acclaimed French photographer Bettina Rheims, published here by Taschen next week. Olga is coy about the details but it is evident that the project was, as ever, funded by husband Sergey. After commissioning cover shoots for the Russian editions of Playboy and FHM, he thought it was time for his wife to appear in a book. One thousand limited-edition copies will be available, each costing £300.Despite her pneumatic figure, Olga does not come across as an exhibitionist: she is coy, softly spoken, girlish. She wears discreet, nude make-up. Only a set of perfectly arched eyebrows betray the level of grooming that must go into her look. Her nude career started as a one-off experiment 10 years ago. She was doing a fashion shoot for a magazine and the photographer suggested she strip. 'I thought, "Why not?" I was afraid, though, and very uncomfortable. But once you've done it, it becomes normal and you don't think anything of it.' After that, she says, the photographers started coming and how do you say no when your husband offers Helmut Newton to photograph you? Over the past 10 years Sergey has commissioned portraits - some of them very explicit - by Newton, David Lachapelle, Peter Lindbergh and Guido Argentini.'By the time I did the first cover for Russian Playboy in 2000, I was comfortable with it,' says Olga. She reels off the photographers she has worked with most recently: Jean-Daniel Lorieux ('he's a friend of Carla Bruni - I love her, don't you?') and Gilles Bensimon (once married to Elle Macpherson). Either they come to Moscow or she travels to wherever they are. She won't be drawn on cost, but it must be hundreds of thousands of pounds.This is not uncommon in wealthy Russian circles: Bettina Rheims says in the past three years she has photographed seven or eight rich Russians who all want the equivalent of a personal Pirelli calendar. 'They want to look sexy and over-the-top,' says Rheims, speaking from her home in Paris. 'And they want to put themselves in danger a little bit.'At first Rheims saw this as just another private commission: 'Olga's husband sent me some pictures of her and they were horrible. I could see that she was pretty but she did look a bit vulgar and common. When I showed them to the hairdresser and stylist I work with they said, "We are going to have to spend quite a few days with her".' But when Olga turned up at Rheims's country home in Normandy, they were all shocked: 'This huge black limo arrived and an amazing pair of long, never-ending legs stepped out. She was really pretty and not cheap at all. And she turned out to be very funny and intelligent. Suddenly an obligation turned into something much more interesting.' Over the next year they did another two more shoots in France and The Book of Olga was born.The book is extraordinarily explicit and shockingly pornographic, some of it borderline offensive.Some photos seem intentionally kitsch. Here is Olga stepping out of an open-topped sports car wearing a leopardskin thong and fetish sandals. There she is lying flat on her back naked in a field of long grass, being ravaged by a lobster. Others are strangely ambiguous. There are black and white poses of her in leather hotpants, zip open at the front, with collar and whip, but looking like a mother smiling at her newborn baby. As Marie Antoinette, complete with beauty spot, Olga looks demure, almost virginal, until you see that she is holding a black dildo. She is naked in most of the photographs, apart from the odd wisp of lace or bondage tie, and an elaborate labial piercing is clearly on show throughout. Olga describes the pictures as representing 'broken glamour - they are fractured images. A friend of mine said, "I didn't think anyone could improve on Madonna's Sex book but you have".'There is something a little disturbing about the project. Olga says: 'Sometimes I had to say to Bettina, "Is this really necessary?" She would say yes. And so with only one or two exceptions we did it. We decided to do something that will go down in history. I love the Marie Antoinette series. It was a completely new image for me, an idea you can play around with. We used the costumes from the Sofia Coppola film and it was all historically correct. 'If someone says to me, "Take your clothes off", I can't do it. I need my motivation. Bettina used to say to me, "Olga, I have a surprise waiting for you". Then if there was a pose I didn't like, we would discuss it. I had to feel comfortable taking my clothes off in front of 20 people. One of the male models had an energy I didn't like so he was removed.'What does her husband think of The Book of Olga? 'He loves it. Although he is a businessman, he is a creative person. I always tell him that he should have gone into the arts. He is a very open person - The Book of Olga is proof of our trust in each other.' She thinks her creative projects have helped their relationship, which she admits is unorthodox. She and Sergey moved in together in 1994 and had a daughter two years later, but didn't marry until 2002. 'People get divorced here a lot, but we've been together 15 years. We are not ordinary people, though. We are separate a lot of the time too, which keeps us interested in each other.' Her daughter knows about her nude pictures but has not seen them. 'She's too young. I will explain it to her in the appropriate language when the time comes.'Like many wealthy Russian men, Olga's husband Sergey shuns the spotlight. He is not keen to be interviewed: we communicate by email. He apologises for his English (which is excellent, if slightly eccentric). He sees these images as liberating for women: 'This is the first book by a great artist [Bettina Rheims] dedicated to an ordinary woman [Olga]. To my mind, it's Bettina's best work because nobody tried to influence her imagination. It provides an assurance for all ladies that beauty does not necessarily coincide with youth only. It is an eternal category.' He is eager to point out, however, that he is not a billionaire 'and I hate throwing money around and showing off'.Olga, however, loves to show off, and wanted to be an actress as a child. Her family was privileged during the Soviet era. Her father was in the Moscow military police and mother was a doctor. Olga studied at the Institute of Management and Law and briefly went into banking, where she met Sergey. Soon after, a friend of hers who owned a clothes shop left for America and she borrowed the money to buy it from him. She later bought the Vivienne Westwood boutique on Moscow's most exclusive shopping street, but closed it in July because it was getting too stressful in the economic climate.She travels constantly, especially in the Middle East, where she buys all her perfumes. She and Sergey have a large apartment in Moscow but she spends a lot of time at their house near Zagreb, Croatia. She prefers Milan and Paris for shopping. When we meet she is dressed demurely in Chanel jeans and a scooped-neck Etro jumper, carrying a Celine bag. Her necklace reads 'Olga': her husband had it specially commissioned. She owes her figure, she says, to the gym and bellydancing. She is careful with her diet: she does not mix food groups, never eating protein and carbohydrates at the same meal. She says she maintains a very small circle of friends. 'I don't like parties. They're just for drinking and talking about nothing.'Her disdain for socialising is understandable: in certain Moscow circles, the Rodionovs are ridiculed as pornographers. 'I do not really care about what people say,' says Sergey. 'In many cases of disapproval, people mostly have their own unresolved problems in their relationships.'For him, these photographs represent Olga's power as a woman and their strength as a married couple. 'This is about the freedom of a woman who dares to appear the way the artist sees her and who is aware of her beauty and strength. She is confident in herself, in her relationship and she is not afraid of what other people will think of her. It is also about the freedom of a man who is so sure in his feelings, in his family and in his relationship with his woman that he fully approves of her self-expression. I would be proud if this book occupies a place in the history of art.'This may sound absurd, but The Book of Olga has already been hailed in the French press as a great work of art. Le Monde placed it in the tradition of the Marquis de Sade and Titian. The French art critic Catherine Millet, best-known for her bestselling memoir The Sexual Life of Catherine M, agreed to write a foreword for the book. Millet compared one of the images to Gustave Courbet's The Origin of the World and describes Olga and Sergey as champions of 'the rights of individual freedom'. Millet describes Olga as being 'almost absent' in the pictures. Rheims agrees that this is what makes the images powerful: 'It was as if she is outside the frame. She is looking at herself being this character - but she is not there. It's her detachment which makes it art.' This is what prevents the book from being 'just another dirty book', says Rheims: 'The strange thing is that Olga never seems to really care about anything: she neither agrees nor disagrees with it and she does not seem to take pleasure from it. That was the strangest thing that I had to deal with: her absence.'She was doing what I told her to do and she was not reluctant at all - but somehow she was not involved. If she hadn't wanted to do it, she would have said no. She is a strong woman. It's not that the husband is saying, "Do this or I'm going to beat you up". I would ask her, "Olga, do you want to do these pictures, because if you don't, I'm not going to take them. Do you want to take your clothes off and open your legs?" And she said, "Yes, of course, otherwise I wouldn't be here". But she takes it as a job. She is like somebody who goes to the factory and they don't dislike it, but they don't have fun either.'This is, of course, what makes this enterprise fascinating: the balance of power between a man who has purchased this role for a wife who is not exactly unwilling but not entirely compliant either. Olga says she is a muse, a model - a vessel for the artist's fantasy. 'I am not in that book. It's not me.' Does it affect her sex life with her husband? 'No. It doesn't affect my personal life,' she answers coldly. 'It's work. You are a muse and you are playing a role.'Not everyone understands this, though, she adds, and that is why the book will not go on sale in Russia. 'These pictures will never be seen here. Our society is not ready for such things. Some people here don't even see photography as an art form. People don't understand here, they can be primitive: they confuse the image with the person. The thing about Russia is that as soon as you pop your head above the parapet, people will slap you down. Someone has already written that a husband should not allow his wife to do this. 'Russia is a patriarchy and men prefer their wives to stay at home under lock and key. No one wants feminism here. My husband knows I could not sit at home doing nothing. Besides, I would not be interesting to him if I did that.'Olga is enigmatic (which is perhaps how her husband likes it). While we talk about her life, she does appear curiously detached, as if she is talking about someone else. Bettina Rheims adds that she never quite got to understand her: 'Olga is very different from the other Russians I have photographed and we have become great friends - but they were all pretty crazy. It's a crazy moment for Russia and they are all going bankrupt now so it's probably even more bizarre. Russians are always so over the top and extravagant. They are fun, generous and exuberant. I can't complain about any of the private jobs I've done there - because they're into anything. In Russia you can go much further in your fantasies and I found a kind of generosity in that.'Sergey and Olga both hope she can continue doing these kinds of shoots for years to come. 'I did this because it was Bettina Rheims,' says Olga. 'I have no shame or embarrassment about it. Lots of beautiful women have been photographed naked: Madonna, Monica Bellucci, Claudia Schiffer. That naked photo of Carla Bruni has been round the world and no one thinks any less of her for it. But I do understand that it's not for everybody and that a lot of people have complexes about their body.' I am still not convinced she is doing this entirely for herself. She admits that her favourite set is by the fashion photographer Sante D'Orazio: 'I'm fully dressed in all of them. I look at my most glamorous when I'm wearing clothes.' However, her husband Sergey adds: 'I would love Olga to continue doing nude photography because it perfectly confirms my privileges. She would always be trying to look her best and take care of her body - to my benefit.' ? The Book of Olga is published by Taschen at £300RelationshipsPhotographyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Jason Solomons takes a look at the films that are rejuvenating French cinema

When director Laurent Cantet accepted the Palme d'Or at Cannes last May, he took to the stage surrounded by a large cast of children. African, Caribbean, white, Arab, Chinese - these French faces were the young stars of his film Entre les murs (The Class). It was a stirring, televised spectacle for the host nation - not only was it the first time in 21 years that a French film had picked up cinema's most prestigious trophy but it was a film about youth, hope and multi-culturalism that had achieved it.The Class is a magnificent film tracing a state school year in the lively, racially mixed classroom of one teacher, François Bégaudeau. A winning blend of documentary style and improvised drama, the film reflects the changing nature of French society in microcosm, using these 14-year-old Parisian kids' identities and personalities to touch on themes of race, postcolonialism, language and law. Cantet's film is not typical of traditional French cinema, but does its success at Cannes mean that, finally, France's film-makers are opening up to the possibilities of reflecting the new world around them?Perhaps the cosy, traditional French bourgeois drama is becoming a thing of the past. Such films have tended to fall into two categories: the country house affair, with large family gatherings on sun-filled terraces; or the urbane Parisian comedy, packed with bistro meetings, girls in summer dresses, chic women in Chanel suits, fabulous apartments overlooking the Seine and strolls in the Jardin du Luxembourg.Perhaps the optimism inspired by France's victory in the football World Cup that it hosted in 1998, when the 'rainbow nation' team of Zinedine Zidane, Thierry Henry and Youri Djorkaeff paraded along the Champs-Elysées, has now filtered into French culture. 'All I know is that this film struck a chord with this particular jury at Cannes in this particular year,' says Cantet. 'I greatly enjoyed making the film and spending a year with these wonderful young people, so, personally, I think there is great cause for hope in the future of our country and it is encouraging to see that hope reflected in French cinema.'These are heady times for French film, which seems finally to have found a new voice after many years spent emerging from the long shadows of the Nouvelle Vague and battling the influence of Hollywood. French films are taking centre stage around the world and the names of French directors are once again rolling off the tongues of cinephiles: Cantet, Abdellatif Kechiche, Olivier Assayas, Agnès Jaoui. Is this the start of a new New Wave?This group of directors is disparate but certainly brings a new edge to French film. Cantet has been building a distinctive career with socially aware films such as Human Resources and Time Out, films about men caught in suffocating systems and workplaces. Kechiche, born in Tunisia, has also - in films such as L'esquive (The Dodge) and last year's César-winning Couscous - concentrated on a social realism more in tune with the films of Britain's Ken Loach than anything in the French tradition. The films of Assayas, a former film critic, range widely, from twentysomething Parisian bourgeois angst in Fin août, début septembre, to a spin on period drama among a porcelain-producing family in Les destinées sentimentales, to doom-laden global futurism in Demonlover.'We're not a family, that's for sure,' says Agnès Jaoui, the writer, director and actress whose new film, Let's Talk About the Rain, is now playing in UK cinemas. Jaoui - known for polished ensemble comedies such as the Cannes-winning Comme une image (Look at Me) and The Taste of Others - was brought up by poor immigrant Tunisian Jewish parents in Paris. 'I don't feel that we're part of a new school or fashion or movement. But, yes, we are, we must be, united by something - the fact that, somehow, 15 years or so ago, French cinema survived.'Jaoui is referring to 'la loi Toubon', the law introduced in 1994 by culture minister Jacques Toubon which protected French language and production. Two out of every five songs on the radio, for example, must be in French. The laws on film production led to tax breaks and levies pouring money into French productions and keeping French films playing in multiplexes.According to Jaoui, all European countries would benefit from such laws. 'French cinema was nearly destroyed by the weight of its own history and by the power of Hollywood on its young people,' she says. 'Maybe even film-makers were against these laws at first, but now I would say that, among us all in the current generation, there is a general feeling, a mood, of survival and of diversity.'In France, 2008 has been a landmark year. Not only did The Class win the Palme d'Or but Marion Cotillard won a Best Actress Oscar - the first French language performance ever to do so, propelling her film, La Vie en Rose, to impressive international box-office figures (£1m in the UK). France also produced its most successful film ever in Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (Welcome to the Sticks), a culture-clash comedy based in small-town northern France, which brought 20 million French people into cinemas, grossing more than $200m and, so far, racking up more than two million DVD sales. No film, French or American, has been more popular.In the UK, French film dominates the foreign language releases. The number of French films in 2008 stands at 42, with receipts expected to be above £15m. According to Unifrance, which promotes French film abroad, the number of tickets sold in the UK for French films in the past three years has increased fivefold.What we are seeing, in other words, is a new wave of commercialism in French cinema. Rather than wowing the world - as the New Wave did with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle or Truffaut's Les quatre cents coups - with a new style or a new film grammar, France has positioned itself as a powerhouse of production, cultivating a domestic scene that also feeds international reputation and demand. For instance, it is not seen as a commercial risk to have French actor Mathieu Amalric as the latest Bond villain.French cinema is using this new internationalism wisely. Guillaume Canet, for instance, is perhaps best known for starring with Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach. But he is also the young director behind Tell No One, a stylish thriller that enjoyed a long run in British cinemas last year and is now enjoying cult success in New York and Los Angeles. You would not call it traditional 'arthouse', but it does trade on being more upmarket simply because it's in a foreign language. It also depicts a grittier, urban France, which is also reflected in one of the most anticipated French films, Mesrine: Public Enemy Number One, an epic, two-part crime saga starring Vincent Cassel as one of France's most notorious gangsters. This year's current stylish French mystery - complete with bluesy guitar slides reminiscent of Tell No One - is I've Loved You So Long, which looks likely to earn several awards nominations for its leading lady, Kristin Scott Thomas, who also appeared in Tell No One, and is, of course, familiar around the world.The global reach of French cinema is both a blessing and a curse, according to a veteran observer of such things. Agnès Varda, often labelled the 'grandmother of the New Wave', is now 80 but has just completed a beguiling personal film called Les plages d'Agnès. 'Nowadays, French cinema has to be international to survive. There is so much competition, so much pressure. Now you have films from a dozen other countries. We never had that. Our only competition used to be from the Italians.'Varda thinks highly of Abdellatif Kechiche whose La graine et le mulet (Couscous) is a wonderful film which follows an elderly Arab immigrant, Slimane, as he tries to build his dream: a fish couscous restaurant on a disused boat in the town of Sète, near Marseille. Again, like Cantet, using improvisation and documentary techniques in a realist tradition, Kechiche's masterly work brought to the fore a cast of characters - mostly Arab in origin - ignored by French cinema for too long. An unexpected commercial success at the French box office, Couscous introduced the actress Hafsia Herzi and she is now on her way to becoming French cinema's first female Arab superstar.France's leading Arab film star is Jamel Debbouze, who first became known through TV comedy but who has now moved to the big screen in films such as the Asterix adaptations starring Gérard Depardieu, Amélie opposite Audrey Tatou and, most significantly, the fine revisionist Second World War drama Days of Glory, directed by Algerian-born Rachid Bouchareb, about the contribution of African troops in liberating France from the Nazis. Debbouze is now starring in Let's Talk About the Rain. 'Jamel is a phenomenon in France, not just a star,' says Jaoui. 'But would you believe we still got some sniping in the press, that we were seeking bigger audiences by working with Jamel, that we were somehow dumbing down our usual ensemble to include him. That's just rubbish, but it shows how hard it still is to change things around in France.'Even more traditional French films have been given a twist. It's interesting to note that idiosyncratic director Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale and Olivier Assayas's recent hit, Summer Hours, starring Juliette Binoche, are both about old French families coming to terms with the death of their matriarch and the divvying up of the family home. Let's Talk About the Rain has similar themes. All three films show a big French family shaken up by modern life, with its taxes, globalism and multiculturalism. For Assayas, a return to making bourgeois drama was, ironically, the route for him to say more about the future of French culture. In the film, family members (including Binoche, Jérémie Renier, Charles Berling) meet to discuss what to do with the valuable art collection left in their family summer house after the death of their mother (Edith Scob), once the lover of a great artist. The film borrowed many fabulous artworks from the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.'I was surprised how easily this kind of bourgeois story was the canvas for talking about issues that obsess me,' says Assayas. 'Namely, how to respect the past yet also to embrace the future and appreciate its styles, fashions and ideas as much as what came before. I was surprised, too, by how popular this type of story still is with audiences, particularly abroad.'It's interesting that this generation of film-makers see themselves as reacting to the New Wave. 'The films of Godard and Truffaut are fine,' says Jaoui, 'but I think it took the new generation so long to come out of the shadow of the Nouvelle Vague that they did as much harm as good. You know, the Cahiers du Cinéma [France's leading intellectual film magazine] and the critics, that sort of snobisme held back film-makers for too long - it made us scared, lacking in experimentation to find our own voice to say: this is who we are, this is how we want our films to sound, to look, to be about.'I'm French but I'm the child of Tunisian parents, so I don't know if I would call my film French in any typical way. What is that now? Is it sophisticated comedy or realist social drama or big budget action? What we see now is very talented film-makers realising, hey, we're all still here, we're all alive, so let's just make the films we can and enjoy it. If that's a movement, then that's what we're all part of.' ? The Class opens in FebruaryWhat do you think? Email us at review@observer.co.ukNew classics: Cinq to see Irreversible (2002) Violent stunner from Argentinian-born director Gaspar Noé, a long, dark Paris nightmare about Vincent Cassel seeking revenge for the rape of his lover, Monica Bellucci. Prompted walk-outs and fainting at Cannes.The Beat My Heart Skipped (2005) Career-making performance by actor Romain Duris in Jacques Audiard's urban thriller about a property repo-man among immigrant squatters who really wants to be a concert pianist. Hidden (2005) Directed by Austrian Michael Haneke, Hidden gripped audiences with its unsettling mystery about a couple (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche) sent incriminating video tapes - a brilliant film about post-colonial bourgeois guilt and the first to mention a police massacre of Algerian protesters in Paris in 1961.La Vie en Rose (2007) Olivier Dahan's biopic of Edith Piaf earned Marion Cotillard the first-ever best actress Oscar for a French language performance. Controversially skated over the Nazi occupation of Paris, and Piaf's performances for German officers.Couscous (2007) Released in France as La graine et le mulet, it was the surprise winner of four Césars earlier this year. The long family Sunday lunch is one of the great food scenes in film.World cinemaguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds