When the entire play takes place in a claustrophobic room which is to be designated as hell, you know you’re not exactly in for a fun ride. But while Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit can be almost excruciating at times in its bleakness, it makes for a fairly compelling night of theater. And Scena Theater’s current rendition, a reprisal from another take not too long ago, is a faithful take with relatively few missteps. In the…

Danièle Thompson’s Avenue Montaigne (released in France as Fauteuils d’Orchestre, or Orchestra Seats) is a charming, slightly sugary movie. Thompson got her start writing screenplays, most famously a shared credit for the excellent, disturbing history film La Reine Margot, perhaps the truest look ever at the troubled French monarchy. In the last several years, she has been directing her own comic screenplays, beginning with La Bûche in 1999, with the same incisive approach to character…