Film: Melanie Lynskey: You may have seen her in supporting roles in such movies as Up in the Air, Win Win or Perks of Being a Wallflower, but she finally gets a leading role in an independent film worth your attention called Hello, I Must Be Going, a Sundance Festival favorite that plays the Mos’Art Theatre in Lake Park this week. Lynskey is the reason to see the flick, which features her as a glum divorcee who returns to the home of her disapproving parents (Blythe Danner, John Rubenstein), and starts living again after meeting a younger guy (Christopher Abbott), the son of her parents’ friends. Entertainment Weekly says Lynskey has a shot at an Oscar nomination, which may be excessive, but see her in Hello, I Must Be Going and you will not soon forget who she is.
For eight seasons now, Patrick Gimenez has been offering his mini-festival of contemporary French cinema. This weekend in Miami, and next weekend in Deerfield Beach, Cinema France Floride presents 10 films that premiered in France this year, including Maman (Mom), Alexandra Leclere’s comedy about two daughters who kidnap their mother in order to force her to love them. Shows are at the MDC Tower Theater in Miami today and tomorrow, and at the Paragon Deerfield 8 from Friday through Sunday. Details can be found at www.francecinemafloride.com.
Theater: Palm Beach County has a new theater company, The Women’s Theatre Project, which has relocated from Fort Lauderdale to Boca Raton’s Willow Theatre in Sugar Sand Park, opening this weekend with Barbara Pease Weber’s Delval Divas, about six women coping with life in prison. Women Behind Bars 2, anyone? Genie Croft directs a first-rate cast that includes Sally Bondi, Lisa Braun, Lela Elam, Jacqueline Laggy, Jessica K. Peterson, and Karen Stephens. The production runs through Nov. 18. Call 561-347-3948 for tickets.
Art: Florida Atlantic University’s Fine Arts Festival, under way this weekend, showcases the paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, photography, jewelry and printmaking of FAU students. Artwork from professional artists is also featured in the festival, which runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and Sunday on the Boca Raton campus. Artwork for the festival is on display in the Visual Arts Center and the Schmidt Center Gallery. Proceeds of the festival, including a silent auction, funds scholarships for visual arts students at FAU. Free parking for the festival is available in a parking garage on campus. For more information, visit faufineartsfestival.com.
If you’re still around at 5 p.m. today or at 2 p.m. tomorrow, head on over to the T-6 building on campus (one of the first buildings there in the university’s previous incarnation as a World War II Army Air Field training site) to celebrate the opening of the hand-papermaking studio, a project of FAU’s Arthur and Mata Jaffe Center for Book Arts. The party is 1940s-style, so get out your best square-shouldered jackets for the event, which will feature accordionist Anne Dennis, and guests will be allowed to use a printing press, make paper and eat apples and doughnuts (you can buy them, too). The event is free and open to the public; hours are 5-9 p.m. today and 2-6 p.m. Sunday. The building is just past the FAU Stadium on Northwest Eighth Avenue. Call 297-0455.
Music: The Master Chorale of South Florida presents its first series of concerts this weekend, and bids farewell to its director of just one year at the same time. Karen Kennedy, who is stepping down to focus on her duties as director of choral studies at the University of Miami, will lead her forces through Carl Orff’s deathless cantata Carmina Burana. The chorale will be joined by the Frost Chorale, Florida’s Singing Sons Boychoir, and the Frost Symphony Orchestra in this 1936 work, which is easily the most popular classical choral piece of the century, and which presages in its stripped-down way the appeal and thrust of rock and roll. The gang gathers at the Arsht Center’s Knight Concert Hall at 4 p.m. Sunday; tickets start at $35 and several sections are already sold out. Call 305-949-6722 for tickets.