After road trip, Mobile Home hits cinemas

by Aurore Engelen

22/08/2012 - After winning the second young jury prize in Locarno (read more) at the beginning of the month, François Pirot’s feature debut Mobile Home [trailer] is now out in Belgian cinemas. The film follows the desperately motionless journey of two losers - who are sometimes magnificent, sometimes pathetic - as they hit their thirties and wonder how on earth they are going to fit in professionally, socially, sentimentally, and family-wise in life. They could be annoying, but instead actors Guillaume Gouix and Arthur Dupont (photo), with their spontaneity and energy, make these two characters endearing, thus making film more than just the expected comedy about a thirties crisis.

While the film’s distribution on 9 copies by Cinéart is pretty standard for a Belgian feature in the French language, its pre-release promotional campaign was less so. Led by Cuistax (a newcomer to film promotion, created by Philippe Kauffmann from La Parti Production in association with Joseph Rouschop from Tarantula, who produced the film), it featured the film’s mobile home on a road trip around Belgium’s great summer music festivals. Festival-goers were invited to pose inside the mobile home for a photo, and even the Belgian prime minister was unable to resist the temptation of this mobile photo booth. An online strategy and a strong partnership with Belgian newspaper Le Soir complemented this original idea, which thus contributed to raising the film’s profile among its target audience. Box office results to follow in a few weeks’ time!

In other news, Joachim Lafosse’s Our Children [trailer, film focus] is also out in France in no less than 135 cinemas today (read more). Surfing in on enthusiastic reviews (Les Inrockuptibles, Libération) and high-profile partnerships (including with France Inter), and without the “true story” hype (that soon became suffocating for the Belgian public), the film should find it easier to draw an audience in France than in Belgium, where it nevertheless made 35,000 admissions.

(Translated from French)