04/04/2014 - After having taken almost 5 million admissions, Dany Boon’s film is topping the French charts, filled with national comedies and a handful of European arthouse titles

Whereas French comedies were harshly criticised last year, following a few crushing box-office failures, they have been back in town since the start of 2013, occupying the top spots in the country’s box-office charts. Superchondriac [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Dany Boon has reached 4.93 million admissions in five weeks (Pathé Distribution), Fiston [+see also:
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film profile] by Pascal Bourdiaux has racked up 1.58 million viewers in three weeks (distributed by SND), and Crocodile from Botswanga [+see also:
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film profile] by Fabrice Eboué and Lionel Steketee has taken 1.22 million admissions in six weeks (Mars Distribution), while Les trois frères, le retour by Didier Bourdon, Bernard Campan and Pascal Légitimus ended its run with a total audience of almost 2.24 million (Wild Bunch Distribution), despite highly negative reviews.

This audience revival in favour of national comedies was accompanied by sustained attendance levels for animated films, spearheaded by French feature Minuscule – Valley of the Lost Ants [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Thomas Szabo and Hélène Giraud (taking almost 1.4 million admissions in nine weeks – distributed by Le Pacte and Les Editions Montparnasse). This particular appeal for younger audiences has fuelled the debate around the “4 euros for the under-14s” deal that was put in place on 1 January by the National Federation of French Cinemas (read the article). The new price was unilaterally adopted by the exhibitors, thus ruffling the distributors’ feathers.

The recent rude health of French cinema at the box office was also boosted by Beauty and the Beast [+see also:
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making of
interview: Christophe Gans
interview: Léa Seydoux
interview: Vincent Cassel
film profile] by Christophe Gans (taking almost 1.82 million admissions in seven weeks - Pathé Distribution), Yves Saint Laurent [+see also:
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interview: Jalil Lespert
film profile] by Jalil Lespert (a run which drew an audience of 1.6 million - SND) and Diplomacy [+see also:
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film profile] by Volker Schlöndorff (374,000 admissions in four weeks - Gaumont).

In terms of non-national European arthouse cinema, Ida [+see also:
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interview: Pawel Pawlikowski
interview: Pawel Pawlikowski
film profile] by Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski made quite a splash, with a total of 445,000 admissions in seven weeks (Memento Films Distribution), but we must also draw attention to the excellent performance of the American-German co-production The Grand Budapest Hotel [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
film profile] by Wes Anderson (1.15 million viewers in five weeks and only a 20% drop compared to the last weekly rankings – distributed by 20th Century Fox) and the Oscar-winning American-British feature 12 Years a Slave [+see also:
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making of
interview: Michael Fassbender
film profile] by English director Steve McQueen (1.68 million admissions in ten weeks - Mars Distribution).

(Translated from French)