Word: urbaine
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...most likeable character; for all of Amélie’s shy allure, she seems aggravatingly out of touch with the reality around her. The large supporting cast is just as stellar, providing a neighborhood full of eccentric foils for Amélie’s do-gooding. Urbain Cancelier and Jamel Debbouze are particularly amusing as the domineering greengrocer and his meticulous assistant, whose neatly arranged stand doubles as a local meeting-place. If anything, the subplots are so engrossing that one feels vaguely cheated by their brevity. What’s more, Jeunet sets his film...
...movie with Richard Dreyfuss in 1974 and earned Richler an Oscar nomination for the screenplay. He also wrote prolifically on such political topics as the Quebec separatist movement, scoffing at the law banning exterior signs in any language but French as "linguistic cleansing." His novels Cocksure (1968) and St. Urbain's Horseman (1971) both won the Governor General's Literary Award, Canada's highest writing prize...
RESTAURANTS: Cafe Santropol, located in a cozy triplex on St. Urbain, is a community staple. Smiling patrons linger for hours amidst huge papier-mâché fruits and munch on enormous sandwiches filled with concoctions of buckwheat, chocolate, walnuts, pineapple, vegetarian pate, lobster and cheeses. Importantly, Santropol serves the world's most stylish milkshakes. Nearby, EI Zazzium on Roy Street is a small restaurant that serves up huge platters of guacamole and pitchers of fresh sangria. It is bedecked in layer upon layer of bizarre and flashy decor, including huge fish nets, colorful animal mobiles and lots of toilet...
...Saul Bellow had remained in Quebec, Mordecai Richler would be Canada's second best Jewish novelist. That would be nothing to agitate a stick at. Most of Richler's 10 novels, which include The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and St. Urbain's Horsemen, are inspired comedies about Montreal's Jewish community, of which the author, now 66, remains a member...
Then again, so does the author. Throughout a bright literary career -- most notably in St. Urbain's Horseman and Joshua Then and Now -- Canadian novelist Richler has employed a unique blend of humor, history and myth. Here his mixture is richer and darker than before. He is a ringmaster, making his performers do dazzling backflips without missing a beat. At the same time he is a moralist, recoiling from those who would sentimentalize the Holocaust or make power a sacrament. In the middle of the journey, Bernard Gursky seeks a biographer. "For this job," he booms, "I don't want...