In his previous films, the French director Bernardo Bonello has demonstrated a non-judgemental affinity for pornographers, prostitutes, and other transgressors. In his latest, House of Tolerance (House of Pleasures in the US), his sympathy is with the languid courtesans of a doomed high-class fin-de-siècle Parisian brothel, who are united in their contempt for the wealthy, condescending men who subject them to fetishes, diseases, and violence.

Abandoned attempts to bring Sebastian Faulks's World War One novel to the movie screen stretch from Soho to Sunset Boulevard. Most of these were prepared and discarded under the auspices of Working Title Films, so perhaps it's fitting that Birdsong has finally been made by the BBC and Working Title's new television division.

Jonathan Meades’s trawl through France began with the breezy theme tune from ‘Allo ‘Allo taking an unceremonious tumble from the turntable, signalling an instant war on cliché which continued with the promise of “no Piaf, no Dordogne, no ooh la la, no checked tablecloths”. The opening was quintessentially Meades – arch, parodic, iconoclastic, ever so slightly self-mocking. If Rick Stein was watching he’d have suffered a severe case of the shakes. This was an unvarnished portrait of a nation scrubbed clean of its lipstick, powder and paint.

Since the publication of Sebastian Faulks's World War One-era bestseller Birdsong in 1993, actors and film-makers have been falling over each other to bring a version to the screen. Such names as Joe Wright, Sam Mendes, Ralph Fiennes, Andrew Davies, Eva Green, Rupert Wyatt and Damian Lewis have been connected with a string of abortive efforts, but up to now a short-lived stage version directed by Trevor Nunn has been the only dramatisation to have seen the light of day.

The Wigmore Hall staged its own Entente Cordiale last night with an operatic double bill bridging both sides of the Channel.

The surprises linger longest. The things you’re not prepared for, the things of which you’ve got little foreknowledge. Lykke Li’s Wounded Rhymes was amazing, and she was equally astonishing live, too. Fleet Foxes's Helplessness Blues was more than a consolidation on their debut and The War On Drugs’s Slave Ambient was a masterpiece. But you already knew to keep an eye on these three. Things arriving by stealth had the greatest impact.

The 20th anniversary of the death of Serge Gainsbourg is an important milestone, but it has overshadowed the fact that 10 years have passed since the death of an another significant French singer and songwriter, Gilbert Bécaud. The release of Et Maintenant marks the anniversary in fine style, uniting singers across generations, a couple of whom aren’t even French.

Two French films, both exploring the nature of the erotic charge and its impact on characters whose well-being is off balance. One leaves things mostly unsaid, with its leads barely expressing what’s hanging in the air. The other leaves nothing hanging in the air.

It’s got Daniel Auteuil striding moodily (yet approachably) through the Provençal countryside so it must be Pagnol, right? Up to a point. He is best known to us as the author of Jean de Florette and Manon des sources. On paper, this is vintage Marcel Pagnol – a remake of the writer-film-maker’s 1940 film La fille du puisatier, faithful down to large chunks of dialogue – but on screen this is a rather different creature, and it’s clear that there’s a new eye behind the lens. That eye belongs to none other than Auteuil himself.

Serge Gainsbourg died in 1991. His son Lulu was five at the time. Dad and son shared the given name Lucien. Now, they share more than that. On the confounding, unsatisfying From Gainsbourg to Lulu, Gainsbourg junior tackles 16 of his dad’s classic songs for his debut album.