National comedies reign supreme at the French box office
- Laughter is still a sure-fire hit in the movie theatres, as proven by Raid dingue, Alibi.com, Il a déjà tes yeux, The Climb and Rock'n Roll
Despite the fact that not all French comedies succeed in drawing in national audiences - far from it - the box-office figures for the start of 2017 stand as solid proof of the public’s hankering for this particular genre of film. Indeed, Raid dingue [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the fifth feature directed by and starring Dany Boon, following Dream House (1.14 million admissions in 2006), Welcome to the Sticks [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (20.48 million tickets sold in 2008), Nothing to Declare [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (8.1 million admissions in 2011) and Superchondriac [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (5.27 million tickets in 2014) has just smashed through the four-million-admissions mark after three weeks on release, and is still nestled in third place in the weekly charts (distributed by Pathé across 694 screens).
Meanwhile, Alibi.com [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Philippe Lacheau (see the article) is also in great shape, maintaining its grip on the top of the weekly box-office chart, with a total of 1.92 million admissions in two weeks (distributed by StudioCanal in 529 theatres).
Three other comedies are also performing well: Il a déjà tes yeux [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Lucien Jean-Baptiste (1.32 million viewers in six weeks - UGC Distribution in 236 cinemas), The Climb [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Ludovic Bernard, which has just passed one million tickets in five weeks (see the news - Mars Distribution across 401 screens) and, adopting a slightly different register, Rock'n Roll [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Guillaume Canet (which has just been selected in the Spotlight section of the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival), which has taken 982,000 admissions in two weeks (Pathé Distribution in 573 theatres).
While there may be a glut of viewers with an appetite mainly for national comedies, there are also popular exceptions within other genres, in the guise of two French-Canadian co-productions: the family/historical drama A Bag of Marbles [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Christian Duguay (1.23 million admissions in six weeks – distributed by Gaumont across 276 screens) and the animated movie Sahara by Pierre Coré, which has drawn in 901,000 viewers over a period of four weeks (StudioCanal in 492 cinemas).
You don’t have to be a genius to realise that the extremely extensive roll-outs of these all-conquering films also limit the potential of the myriad other titles being released each week. Nevertheless, we should highlight the 144,000 admissions racked up by Lucas Belvaux’s This Is Our Land [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lucas Belvaux
film profile] in its first week (Le Pacte across 235 screens) and the powerful word of mouth that is buoying the documentary Et les mistrals gagnants [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Anne Dauphine Julliand (148,000 viewers in four weeks, with its run expanded to 129 theatres by Nour Films). However, Alone [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by David Moreau (337,000 admissions in 281 cinemas, via StudioCanal) and particularly the documentary L'Empereur [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Luc Jacquet (169,000 viewers in two weeks - The Walt Disney Co France across 340 screens) are not performing as well as expected.
But French film buffs are clearly still alive and kicking, as 197,000 viewers have been to see Loving [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Jeff Nichols over a period of two weeks (Mars Distribution in 198 theatres) and 422,000 people have been heading to the dark rooms to watch Jackie [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Pablo Larraín in the last four weeks (Bac Films in 266 cinemas).
(Translated from French)
Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.