Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Tate Modern review - a creative talent that knew no bounds

Jack of all trades and master of every one

Sophie Taeuber-Arp gave her work titles like Movement of Lines, yet there’s nothing dull about her drawings and paintings. In her hands, the simplest compositions sizzle with tension and dance with implied motion. Animated Circles 1934 (main picture), consists of blue, grey and black circles on a white ground. The off-kilter design makes them appear to shuffle, nudge, float or bounce; you feel light-hearted and light-headed just looking at them.

French Exit review - Michelle Pfeiffer faces mortality

★★★ FRENCH EXIT Michelle Pfeiffer faces mortality in mother-son drama

Mother-son drama is both arresting and arch

Michelle Pfeiffer all but purrs her way through French Exit, as befits a splendid actress who cut a memorable Catwoman onscreen nearly thirty years ago. Playing a New York grande dame who deals with bankruptcy by decamping with her son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges) to Paris, Pfeiffer informs the character of the mortality-obsessed Frances Price with an implicit "meow", as if forever finding fault with a world in which, short of funds, she is now surplus to requirements.

Victoria Mas: The Mad Women's Ball review - compelling plot meets disquieting history

★★★★ VICTORIA MAS: THE MAD WOMAN'S BALL  Compelling plot meets disquieting history

Reimagining the lives of the women incarcerated in the Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière

To this day, if you take a stroll down Paris’ Boulevard de l’Hôpital, you’ll come across an imposing building: the Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière. It’s one of Europe’s foremost hospitals. It’s the place where 20th-century icons Josephine Baker and Michel Foucault departed this world, and its halls buzz with budding young medical students from La Sorbonne. But this is only the most recent chapter in the Salpêtrière’s long history.

Lupin, Part 2, Netflix review - master of disguise versus racists and lies

★★★★ LUPIN, PART 2 , NETFLIX Master of disguise versus racists and lies

Second coming of crowd-pleasing French drama hits virtuoso high notes

Lupin isn’t really about the fictional character it’s named after (the gentleman thief Arsène Lupin, created in 1905 by French writer Maurice Leblanc), but about Assane Diop, who’s an obsessive fan of the Lupin novels.

La traviata, Opera Holland Park review – a revival in rude health

★★★★★ LA TRAVIATA, OPERA HOLLAND PARK A revival in rude health

Rodula Gaitanou's production roars back with splendid singing and emotional conviction

Loudly and painfully, the consumptive Violetta wheezes before we hear a single note. Her pitiful gasping for the breath that deserts her precedes the prelude to Opera Holland Park’s La traviata; the same effect ushers in Act Three. At first I assumed that director Rodula Gaitanou had tweaked her 2018 production for its post-lockdown comeback but, no – the original staging featured this device.

Album: LOUISAHHH - The Practice of Freedom (HE.SHE.THEY.)

★★★ LOUISAHHH - THE PRACTICE OF FREEDOM (HE.SHE.THEY.) Industrial dance pounding of various flavours from New Yorker via Paris

Industrial dance pounding of various flavours from New Yorker via Paris

Somewhere in dance culture or other, the Eighties revival has now been going on more than twice as long as the actual Eighties did. Starting around 1998, it reached an initial peak in the early 2000s as the dayglo-fashion led electroclash, but though the eye of the press moved away, it never really died away.

Album: Mathieu Boogaerts - En Anglais

★★★ MATHIEU BOOGAERTS - EN ANGLAIS The spirit of Chanson comes to south London

The spirit of Chanson comes to south London

Mathieu Boogaerts has been recording since the mid 1990s, emerging from the nouvelle chanson scene in Paris, a chansonnier who’s performed at the likes of Cafe Oto over here, while establishing himself as a star turn on the Tôt ou Tard label in France, mixing Afro-pop and reggae as well as indie elec

Simple Passion review – a case of female amour fou

★★★ SIMPLE PASSION   Empathetic drama about a Parisian professor's need for her evasive married lover

Empathetic drama about a Parisian professor's aching need for her evasive married lover

Pushing 40, Simple Passion’s Hélène (Laetitia Dosch) lectures Paris college students on poetry and is single mother to pre-adolescent Paul (Lou Teymour-Thion). Blessed with a bountiful Deneuve-ian mane, she’s a pale but unfallen bloom in her late thirties passionately entwined, as often as she can be, with the younger Aleksandr (Sergei Polunin), a vulpine, taciturn Russian Embassy security operative (i.e. muscle), who sometimes flies home for marital vacations.

Spiral, Series 8 Finale, BBC Four review - justice is done in stormy climactic episodes

★★★★★ SPIRAL, SERIES 8 FINALE, BBC FOUR Epic French cop show rides off into the sunset

Epic French cop show rides off into the sunset

If this had to be the end of Spiral, the final episodes of Series 8 (BBC Four) at least ensured that justice was done. We saw evidence that on occasion lawyers may be human after all, and there was even the somewhat disorientating semblance of a happy ending (or at least not the bloodbath that had threatened to erupt).