HK Summer IFF 2010: Partir (Leaving)

Leaving (Partir)

Dir: Catherine Corsini | France | 2009

Colour | 85min

Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Yvan Attal, Sergi Lopez

After reinventing herself as a French thespian in the acclaimed I’ve Loved You So Long, Kristin Scott Thomas once again mesmerizes as a woman who leaves her marriage for another man. It’s a classic Lady Chatterley plot, but imbued with genuine emotions and convincing psychological fortitude. Suzanne (Thomas) lives a bourgeois existence with her physician husband Samuel (Yvan Attal) for over twenty years, until the day she meets handyman Ivan (Sergi Lopez). Catherine Corsini’s direction keep things unpredictable even as the jealously and passion build to a boiling point.

2009 Toronto, London, Seattle International Film Festival

(Info adapted from HK Summer IFF)

Le Petit Prince @ Elements

 A nice brochure for you to take

There's another part of it - different planets which Le Petit Prince went to, I will go back to take more photos!

(More info: Elements website)

Short Film: Gratte papier

Very romantic...

French vocab: Short film = Un court-métrage

Handmade La Tour Eiffel Bookmark

My very nice and talented piano teacher gave me this as a gift because she knows how much I like about Paris. :) I love it.

And my colleague gave me this book corner, which she bought in Korea, and coincidently, it has French on it! :P

iPhone dock

I bought an iPhone dock, JBL, a week after my Franch trip, the main purpose is for me to listen to french radio with iPhone app: Radio France (like what I doing now while writing this blog post). I think it's very good for practising my listening, and also I can pretend to be in France still. Haha!

French oral test

I had my oral test this week, the topic was Maison, I wasn't too worried about it. And it's quite short, each person had about 5-10 mins. We were given some photos of different types of maisons en france, and we had to choose which one we like and why. I thought I didn't speak enough.

Anyway, after the 4 of us (the first group) finished, we all left together and the prof said my pronunciation is obviously better than the whole class. I am happy about it. And now I know that I really have to read more french news and books to increase my vocabulary.

Day 3: Paris (31 Mar 2010)

It's a nice day today, very sunny, and the first destination is Musée du Louvre:

On the side before going in. Well, I didn't actually go inside the Louvre cos I did before, and it isn't too cheap and it will take a long time to walk around, that's why I chose not to.

Louvre Pyramid by Chinese-American I.M.Pei (貝聿銘).

Me with the Pyramid, I kind of fall in love with taking photos for myself, haha!

I quite like this picture myself, blue blue sky with Louvre and Pyramid, nice!

And you can see La Tour Effiel from here: (see the thick clouds there?)

Weather is quite unpreditable here, just now there's blue blue sky and suddenly, out of nowhere the clouds came together and it rained:

This is actually took after hiding in the bookshop of Louvre, I have to say that the rain here, even if it's not heavy, it's quite useless to have an umbrella because it's windy!

Next destination - L'arc de Triumphe, and see the cars on Champs Elysee? Always so 車水馬龍. I walked from Louvre to here, it took about 15-20 mins I guess, not too far, and I like walking:

And time for lunch! I chose a cheap place, and the sun came back out, so I chose to sit out, but I got an uninvited "friend" to keep me company:

The bread is nice, not so much the cake though. And here's my "friend"

Yes, the pigeon! I tried so many times to make it go away, it didn't want to! And they symbolise peace? I think it's trying to make a war with me, and up close, they look ugly! I think these are the 風塵白鴿, don't think it's the same type as the peaceful ones.

And then I was already quite tired, but still went to the Virgin bookshop, it's huge! And I bought the thick Petit Nicholas which Mani has at home for myself, and bought 2 other thin versions as souvenir.

And I also went inside Sephora, just to have a look, and then left to go back, cos was really tired as my bag is really heavy.

I took a nap before having dinner with Matthieu at his place, he's an exchange student at PolyU, and it's so good to see him and his wife and daughter of 2 whose name is also Louise! Haha. Cute girl. The flat is nice with a mezzanine (a new french word from him) :). The dinner is in English, I mean our conversation, yea, my level of french still can't last for dinner long. Anyway, it's a very nice soiree. I am going to meet him again the coming Friday for lunch before we left for St.Michel Chef Chef for the long weekend.