Tag Archives: French movies

A Best of the Year: French Film With Unusual Friendship

Wednesday Matinee

Destination: France

Movie: The Intouchables

By Jane Boursaw

The IntouchablesI can’t say I was all that thrilled about seeing The Intouchables when I first heard about it. A movie about a wealthy quadriplegic who hires a poor Algerian immigrant to be his caretaker? No thanks, it sounds like just the sort of sentimental tear-fest I tend to avoid.

But then I saw The Intouchables at the Traverse City Film Festival this summer, and it instantly became one of my favorite films of the year. It’s also a beautiful travelogue through Paris and the French countryside.

Inspired by Philippe Pozzo di Borgo’s memoir A Second Wind, the film follows the author’s life as a black cloud of doom descends upon him in the early 1990s. First his wife is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Then a paragliding accident leaves Philippe a quadriplegic. Even though he’s the descendant of two prominent French families and the director of one of the world’s most celebrated champagne houses, his life is suddenly in ruins. Continue reading A Best of the Year: French Film With Unusual Friendship

Wandering the WWW

Wanted you to know that I have a few guest posts floating around the web.

Travel Wonders of the World features my awe on seeing the  The Bayeux Tapestry and several of my photographs from Bayeux.

Your Life Is A Trip, I talk about an experience I had at a pueblo, while gathering material for Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist.

At Wandering Educators, I repeated the conversation about the Perfect French Movie, and I’m hoping we will get more recommendations from their readers.

At Mothering.com, I wrote a non-travel article about a book about peanut allergies, the Pesky Peanut. Food allergies are a problem for a growing number of children–a problem shared by two of my grandchildren.

Back in December, I got the help of the tourism office in Bayeux to make this list of things to do in Bayeux, France, for Nancy D. Brown’s What a Trip blog.

Even longer ago–in October– I wrote about Normandy and Bayeux for My Itchy Travel Feet.