In a scene from La Vénus électrique, the comedy of sentimental and artistic entanglements that opened the Cannes Film Festival this Tuesday, one of the characters reproaches the painter played by Pio Marmaï that the paintings he has just shown him are laborious, well-made, correct. “In short, horrible,” he concludes. It would be unfair to apply such a strict judgment to Pierre Salvadori’s film, which can also be seen as an effective exercise in film craftsmanship, discreet but with a certain charm and good acting. Its main problem is, once again, the context: opening the world’s most important festival is not easy for a film that seeks an audience with no other intention than to entertain and elicit a few smiles. An ambition that at Cannes can even seem countercultural.

When defining the stage director Rakel Camacho, Josep Maria Pou (director of the Romea Theatre) says she is "one of the most promising of recent years", especially for her ability "to perform somersaults on ancient texts and try to make spectators discover new things, suitable for today's extreme life rhythms". Nominated for the Max awards with Fuenteovejuna (2025), Camacho has been characterized by adapting authors such as Francisco Nieva, Federico García Lorca, and Roberto Bolaño for the theatre. Last year, the director dared to tackle The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, in a production that arrives this Tuesday at the Romea Theatre and will be performed there until May 24.

In a moment of The Silent Friend, the neuroscientist brought to life by Tony Leung (the protagonist of Happy Together in his first role in European cinema) weighs figs in front of the TV. The professor has little to do because he is stranded at a German university in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Until a program with a French scientist catches his attention. The expert argues that plants communicate with us, we just need to find the right communication channel to decode what they are telling us. Spurred on by this idea, the protagonist dedicates his efforts to finding a device that will allow him to connect with the proud ginkgo that presides over the university's botanical garden.

In his reconstructive pursuit of past spaces and atmospheres, Jordi Savall opted in Monday's concert at L’Auditori for the evocation of the Ospedale della Pietà, a Venetian charitable institution dating back to the 13th century which, between the 17th and 18th centuries, experienced one of the most splendid moments in its musical history. Antonio Vivaldi worked there between 1703 and 1740, and inevitably left his very personal mark, in addition to a numerous catalog of sacred and profane compositions.For the occasion, Savall has assembled a female orchestra, Les Musiciennes des Nations, with Lina Tur Bonet from Ibiza as concertmaster and soloist. To the instrumental ensemble, we must add the women members of La Capella Reial de Catalunya, who, with good skill and thanks to the always wise preparation of Lluís Vilamajó, presented two choral pieces by Vivaldi: the Magnificat in G minor and the celebrated Gloria in D major, in this case only for female voices, and which did not make us miss the four-part mixed version.Lina Tur Bonet exhibited a sinuous and immaculate phrasing in the second of the violin concertos (La Stravaganza, from opus 4), after during the Magnificat she had had a problem when a string broke from the first music stand. Something strange was happening, because during the performance of the first of the concertos (the very brilliant Concerto per la solennità di San Lorenzo) Tur did not seem very comfortable and the tuning did not always seem accurate, despite the brilliant and long cadenza of the first movement. Savall took advantage of the string change to explain the sonic difference between metal strings and gut strings, which ended up winning over the audience (something habitual with the master from Igualada, always a good communicator).Before, vocal rigor and neatness took over the Magnificat performed in the solo parts —as would happen with the Gloria— by singers from La Capella Reial. The choral ensemble excelled in truly anthological passages, such as the end of the Et misericordia eius and the entire Fecit potentiam.The good construction of the choral works, the vocal-instrumental conjunction and the brilliance of Vivaldi's music were the ingredients of a good night of Venetian music, well served by most illustrious ambassadors.

One of the most important tasks for film producers is to plan the festival strategy and premiere it in the best possible showcase. And there is no better one than the Cannes Film Festival, the most important in the world and with the most projection for auteur cinema. And if having a film in Cannes is already a success for any producer, having three is a celebration. This is the milestone that the Barcelona-based production company Fasten Films, founded nine years ago by Adrià Monés (Sabadell, 1979), has achieved this year, and he could not be happier with the triple Cannes crown. “It’s many years of effort, and sometimes the result is a silence like those in the West, when a tumbleweed rolls by. But being in Cannes gives visibility and life to films, which in the end is what we are looking for,” he says.

It has been seven years since Pep Brocal decided to figuratively cross the door that separates life from death in what would undoubtedly become one of his greatest works: Inframundo, the story of Amalia, a girl who, traversing hell under the shadow of Dante and Arnold Böcklin, ended up rediscovering herself. At first glance, Anatomy of a Skeleton seems the obvious dance partner to Inframundo, another story starring a character who crosses to the other side of existence to live an adventure that will unfold, with dazzling dynamism and sustained unraveling of brilliant ideas, over several hundred pages (in this case, 256). But the comic artist Félix Filacterio, the protagonist of this latest work, is not exactly Amalia's male counterpart and, beyond its classification within the existential drama genre, Anatomy of a Skeleton has its own identity and agenda, embodying a significant delving into the coming-of-age codes of an author who is experiencing a moment of unquestionable creative fullness. At its core, and among many other things, the album is a masterful lesson on the extremely difficult art of reconciling mastery and lightness, a work that poses itself as a problem to solve its own equation in a celebration of the pleasure of execution (of the line, of the composition) that unfolds into reader enjoyment.

Some works to prevent erosion on the summit of La Mola have uncovered human burial remains around the monastery of Sant Llorenç del Munt, as reported by the ACN. Although the existence of a necropolis in the area was taken for granted, the discovery has been a surprise to archaeologists because the remains have been located in a highly trafficked area, on the access ramp to the monastery's esplanade. Remains of 14 individuals and two anthropomorphic tombs from the early stages of the monastery's occupation, in the 10th century, have been found.

After performing at the Venice Biennale and inaugurating the current season of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya with La mort i la primavera, the company La Veronal will present its new show at the next edition of Temporada Alta. The play will be titled Living & Leaving and will be the first chapter of a trilogy exploring life as a territory in transformation. Fabio Calvisi and Marina Rodríguez will be the performers, tasked with staging the tension between living and leaving, appearing and disappearing, in a medium-format piece designed to be performed in theaters, museums, galleries, or outdoor spaces.

The friendship between two women who grew up together. The need to reinvent oneself in a world dominated by technology. Being young, finding yourself in a black hole and not knowing how to get out. Growing old and facing oblivion. These are not arguments for novels, nor for films, nor for plays, but for circus performances. The Fira Trapezi de Reus, which will take place from May 13 to 17, celebrates its 30th anniversary with a program focused on the diversity of the discipline and with the mission of showing that the circus goes far beyond technique: it is also dramaturgy and can also tell stories that leave the audience satisfied and moved. It will do so with productions such as Refugi, by Manolo Alcántara; Ínsula, by Alexandre Duran; Salar la pena, by Juan Carlos Panduro; 20 years later, still here!, by Lotta & Stina, and Conhort, by Hotel Iocandi, among many others. In total, the fair will host 60 Catalan and international companies with the mission of being a showcase for the circus being made abroad, but above all for what is being made in our country.

This year's edition of FIRE!! will take place from June 4 to 14, with its main venue at the Institut français de Barcelona. The quintessential LGBTIQ+ cinema event in the Catalan capital is no longer a showcase and is now recognized as a festival: the two thousand euro economic endowment provided by the new Ventura Pons award for best feature film is the element that elevates the status of FIRE!!, an initiative launched in 1995 by Casal Lambda of Barcelona. "The percentage of LGBTIQ+ films worldwide is still lower than the ratio of non-strictly heterosexual people," assured the festival director, Antoine Leonetti, at the presentation of the 31st edition to the press.

The ownership of Casa Batlló continues to delve deeper into the building's history and find new uses to keep it alive. They are now opening to the public the last floor inhabited by the descendants of the Batlló family for over a hundred years, after carrying out an archaeological restoration of all elements. The apartment had been preserved with "exceptional authenticity," as stated in the press release issued by the ownership, and constitutes "a valuable testimony to Barcelona domestic life in the early 20th century." The chief architect of Casa Batlló and head of the recovery works, Xavier Villanueva, points out that the one on the third floor is the original residence remaining in Casa Batlló because around 1950 all others were modified except this one, as it was rented to the Batlló family. The third and fourth generation of the Batllós lived in the apartment for over 100 years, until 2019.

Aziz Ansari is still finding himself. After the 2018 lawsuit for a strange episode of inappropriate sexual conduct that left him semi-canceled, he has not quite found the tone to express himself. His 2019 Netflix special, the third installment of Master of none in 2021, and now his film directorial debut show an audiovisual creator with an intermittently out-of-tune voice. It works best when he moves away from comedy: the last season of the series that made him famous was magnificent, but it seemed written by Ingmar Bergman. When he wants to make people laugh again, on the other hand, he walks on eggshells and confuses white humor with insubstantial humor.

Lucy Worsley (United Kingdom, 1973) began her career as a curator of historic houses and learned that history is not only explained through parliaments and battles, but also in the kitchens and bathrooms of the house. How was laundry done? What was the bathroom like? These are questions she addresses in If These Walls Could Talk (Capitan Swing). By joining small details, she achieves a reconstruction of the great changes that have occurred in our society.

[The photograph accompanying this review was provided by promoter Live Nation, who did not specify which concert on the tour it corresponds to. Eric Clapton is not accrediting press photographers on this tour]

"I am no longer in love with you": with these words the narrator's partner ends the eleven-year relationship in Islandia (Destino, 2026), the latest novel by Manuel Vilas. Once again, after the great impact of Ordesa (Alfaguara, 2018) and being a finalist for the Planeta award with Alegría (2019), the writer born in Barbastro in 1962 draws on his own life experience to tell a story of rupture that leaves the protagonist devastated. Will he be able to pick himself up again? Will he be able to find love once more, having suffered two separations that have caused him so much pain? Although Vilas does not shy away from chapters motivated by rage and misunderstanding, Islandia is a book that tries to help the author relearn to look at the world with a spark of optimism.

"I feel respected and valued, and at the same time isolated," says Clara Viñals (Lleida, 1990). Always at the helm of the Renaldo & Clara project, for more than a decade she has been spreading talent and insight in songs that address love and pop, avoiding clichés and lazy rhymes. She now releases the album L'encant (Primavera Labels, 2026), nine songs that validate the perception already conveyed by L'amor fa calor (2020) and La boca aigua (2023), albums that mixed urban rhythms with pop sensibility and a firm poetic delicacy. "I am very satisfied with the trajectory, and many people, also many musicians, have told me they really like what I do, but there is also a bit of an outsider", she explains. It's not a complaint, but an acknowledgment of Renaldo & Clara's position in the Catalan musical context: an artistic project that offers a quality refuge and the possibility of listening to love songs as unique as Gener, Tinc paraules, Amb tu podria estar and Quines coses de mi. A refuge surely shared by other artists like Mallorcan Maria Jaume, and which deserves more popular recognition.

The elevator that goes up to the headquarters of Combel, a seal of children's literature from the Casals publishing house, is a gateway to another dimension. Upon reaching the corresponding floor, the visitor comes face to face with the cardboard version of the characters that delight the youngest readers at home: Agus Pianola, protagonist of the series Agus and the Monsters, the robot Bitmax, the endearing cat Mixifú, and the mysterious Ticniks. Inside a small room are the creators of the seal's latest and tempting proposal, the adaptation of the Iliad prepared by translator Pau Sabaté (Barcelona, 1989) and illustrator Arnal Ballester (Barcelona, 1955). The volume condenses, in just under 200 pages, all the magic and darkness of one of the literary classics par excellence. The epic poem attributed to Homer and dating from the 8th century BC aims to win over new generations of fans as it did, in 2008, with the adaptation for Combel of the Odyssey by Albert Jané and illustrated by Pep Montserrat.

In an edition of the Art Biennale marked by protests against Israel and Russia, the queer artist of the Japanese pavilion, Ei Arakawa-Nash, has placed himself in a much more personal space. His project, titled Grass babies, moon babies [Grass babies, moon babies], is, at the same time, humanist, political, and a bit comical. Arakawa-Nash has filled the pavilion with about 208 baby dolls of different races, available for visitors to hug – they weigh about six kilos – and take for a walk in a stroller. They all wear sunglasses so that whoever holds them can see themselves reflected while holding them.

Comics will once again be the absolute protagonist of ARA's pages next week. To mark the opening of the sector's major fair, Còmic Barcelona, on Friday, May 15, the entire newspaper will be illustrated by cartoonists. On this occasion, the bulk of the images are part of the history of Catalan comics through the archive of the Generalitat de Catalunya, which is collaborating on this special edition. In fact, past and present will go hand in hand because, as we have done in the already increasingly long tradition of special comic newspapers, the cover and the day's dossier will be the work of a comic author: Paco Roca, along with the Valencian journalist Rodrigo Terrasa, will offer their vision of a current topic, and it will be demonstrated again that comics are also a journalistic genre.

Black September, by Sandro Veronesi (Florence, 1959), is a coming-of-age novel, but above all it is a novel about the traumatic end of childhood. For the protagonist, Gigio Bellandi, son of an archetypically Italian criminal lawyer (a good guy with worldly vitality) and an exuberant Irish mother (fair-skinned and red-haired) with a much stronger character than she appears, the summer of 1972, which like every year he spent in a small town on the Tuscan coast with his parents and younger sister, marked a before and after in his life. He was twelve years old then, and now that he is sixty he remembers it in great detail. Not until the last pages will we know exactly what happened to him, but from the beginning we will be clear that that decisive summer represented for Gigio the best and the worst of life: the beginning of becoming a man through the fullness of reciprocal love and seeing how his whole small paradise world was shattered by the selfishness and weaknesses of the adults.Considering the plot materials it is made of, Setembre negre, translated into Catalan by Pau Vidal with the very vivid rigor he has accustomed us to, could have been a short novel –quick, agile, condensed and intense–, but it is noticeable that, in addition to telling a story, the author has also wanted to reconstruct a world and an era, that of his pre-adolescent Italy (sports idols, summer routines, musical discoveries), and for this reason the novel is long, detailed, with meanders, always lively but, at times, narratively ceremonial. This narrative and formal option may be a bit wordy in some passages, but in the long run it adds dramatic force to the climax. It also gives the work as a whole that sediment of humble but transcendent wisdom that springs from deeply examined and meticulously distilled experience.A man who remembers, a voice that tells

Two are the main virtues of Black September. The first is the tone of the narrative voice, evocative without nostalgic complacency, reflective in a passionate and robust way. It is a persuasive and warm voice that makes everything it explains interesting, whether it invents pastimes and sun-and-beach routines or reproduces cataclysmic conversations spied on in secret. It is the immense power of literature when it is, purely and simply, a character who remembers and a voice that tells. The second virtue is a gallery of memorable supporting characters: the well-matched marriage of the parents; Astel Raimondi, the girl with whom Gigio discovers the complete happiness of first love; Astel's parents; the anarchist uncle and his example of dignity and resistance; Gigio's discreet and wonderful little sister... They are supporting characters who complement and enrich the protagonist without ever being subordinate to him.In a novel in which for almost three hundred pages the revelation of an exceptionally dramatic event is announced and postponed, there is a risk of not satisfying expectations. This is not the case with Black September: the final revelation and the mix of subtlety and explosiveness with which Veronesi recounts it are admirable and totally effective. The lesson – let's call it a lesson – of it all, moreover, is wise and resonates with great force, and speaks to us, implicitly, of the fatal error of resentment and the heroic feat of forgiveness.

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