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Twenty years ago this week - Feb. 9, 1996 - the romcom-dramedy Beautiful Girls first opened in theaters. The film centers around Willie (Timothy Hutton), who returns home for his high school reunion in a small Massachusetts town. It's funny, it's heartwarming, and it features one of the better ensemble casts of the 1990s. In honor of the film's 20th anniversary, we're pulling out the yearbook and looking up the film's cast to what they've been up to over the past 20 years. Timothy HuttonHutton won Best Supporting Actor in 1981 for Ordinary People when he was only 20. To this day he's the youngest-ever...

Marc Allégret: From André Gide lover to Simone Simon mentor (photo: Marc Allégret) (See previous post: "Simone Simon Remembered: Sex Kitten and Femme Fatale.") Simone Simon became a film star following the international critical and financial success of the 1934 romantic drama Lac aux Dames, directed by her self-appointed mentor – and alleged lover – Marc Allégret.[1] The son of an evangelical missionary, Marc Allégret (born on December 22, 1900, in Basel, Switzerland) was to have become a lawyer. At age 16, his life took a different path as a result of his romantic involvement – and elopement to London – with his mentor and later "adoptive uncle" André Gide (1947 Nobel Prize winner in Literature), more than 30 years his senior and married to Madeleine Rondeaux for more than two decades. In various forms – including a threesome with painter Théo Van Rysselberghe's daughter Elisabeth – the Allégret-Gide relationship remained steady until the late '20s and their trip to...

An affectionate and vivid portrait of photographer and film-maker Raymond Depardon's life and work

Photographer and film-maker Raymond Depardon drives a van across the French countryside, photographing arresting vignettes (shopfronts, cafes, factories, forests) on a large format camera, using photographic film the richness and depth of which are an intrinsic part of his art.

Meanwhile, long-time partner and sound recordist Claudine Nougaret sifts through the offcuts and outtakes from Depardon's extensive documentary archive; from the protests of Prague and the mercenaries of the former Biafra; through the psychiatric institutions of Italy; to the people, politics and press of France.

En route, we see Nelson Mandela observe a moving minute of silence; archaeologist Françoise Claustre interviewed while held hostage by rebels in Chad in the 70s; Valéry Giscard d'Estaing on the presidential campaign, in snippets from a film he would later try to ban. It's fascinating fare, offering both an...

Valery Giscard d'Estaing has admitted he did not have an affair with Britain's Princess Diana. The former French president - who penned the novel 'The Princess and the President' about a love affair between two characters based on himself and the late Princess of Wales - has admitted he made the racy storyline up because they were actually only friends. He said: "Let's not exaggerate anything. I did get to know her a bit and we had a relationship of trust. She needed to talk. I fabricated the facts but not the places or the settings." In the book, the 83-year-old statesman - who was president of France from 1974 to 1981 - tells the story of a fictional president...

Valery Giscard d'Estaing has admitted he did not have an affair with Britain's Princess Diana. The former French president - who penned the novel "The Princess and the President" about a love affair between two characters based on himself and the late Princess of Wales - has admitted he made the racy storyline up because they were actually only friends.

He said: "Let's not exaggerate anything. I did get to know her a bit and we had a relationship of trust. She needed to talk. I fabricated the facts but not the places or the settings."

In the book, the 83-year-old statesman - who was president of France from 1974 to 1981 - tells the story of a fictional president called Jacques-Henri Lambertye, who falls in love with a British princess from Cardiff named Patricia.

She is described as "very pretty, always in the media, and unhappy at home."...

A former French president has suggested he had an affair with Britain's Princess Diana. Valery Giscard d'Estaing's steamy novel 'The Princess and the President' has been leaked to the French press and the book's two main characters are apparently based on himself and the late Princess of Wales The 83-year-old statesman, who was president of France from 1974 to 1981, tells how a fictional president called Jacques-Henri Lambertye falls in love with a British princess from Cardiff named Patricia. She is described as "very pretty, always in the media, and unhappy at home". In the book, the princess tells how her future husband had confessed to an affair which he intended to continue when they were married. She tells him:...