Life continues to be rosy for Dahan
With 4.6m admissions and a €27.2m gross, Olivier Dahan’s La Vie en Rose [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (see article) continues its run at the top of the French box office after five weeks.
The film on the life of singer Edith Piaf (played by Marion Cotillard) – which opened this year’s Berlin Film Festival, where it was greeted with a standing ovation – was released in French cinemas on February 14 by TFM Distribution on 718 screens and is still showing on 703.
Taking advantage of Printemps du cinéma (March 18-20) – a nationwide event organised by the National Federation of French Cinemas (FNCF) during which cinema tickets are only €3.50 – La Vie en Rose has attracted almost 450,000 filmgoers in its fifth week to clearly outdo its rival, Taxi 4 [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Gérard Krawczyk (see news).
Krawczyk’s film, which had a same-day release on a higher number of prints is now on a downward course, with admissions at only 4.4m.
However, the success of Dahan’s title is all the more remarkable as it is one the rare French films to do this well at the box office that is not a comedy. In the past five years, only The Chorus [+see also:
trailer
film profile] performed better in 2004.
The performance of La Vie en Rose can be compared to Quest for Fire (4.9m admissions in 1981) and Cyrano de Bergerac (4.7m in 1990).
Beyond French borders, La Vie en Rose has already grossed €2m in Germany for 271,000 admissions in three weeks, thanks to a strong release on 205 screens by Constantin – which also released the title on 23 prints in Austria, where it has grossed €186,000 to date. In Belgium, the title took €830,000 in four weeks (Cinéart, 25 prints).
La Vie en Rose was released in Switzerland in February and in the Netherlands on March 8 and will open on Friday in Sweden, Norway and Finland, in Spain on April 20, in the Czech Republic on May 31, and in the UK in June (Icon).
Another film doing well in France at the moment is German director Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck’s hit title The Lives of Others [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Florian Henckel von Donners…
interview: Ulrich Muehe
film profile] (see Focus).
The 2007 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner has garnered 940,000 admissions to date (dist. Océan Films) and attracted 132,000 cinemagoers in its seventh week compared to 110,000 in the previous seven days.
(Translated from French)
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