Giordana's glory years
It is traditional for the French summer film season to "discover" a cult title. This year that honour has gone to a six-hour Italian epic entitled La Meglio Gioventù [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (The Best of Youth) by Marco Tullio Giordana. Released on 9 July onto just four screens in Paris and Lyon by Océan Films, the feature reported the best per-screen average and appears unstoppable.
La Meglio Gioventù, winner of this year's Un Certain Regard in Cannes, is also the only film to report a 9% increase in attendance in its second week and it sold around 9,000 tickets between 9-15 July with a per-screen average of 2,437 tickets from 16-22 July. As a result, Océan released an extra print in Paris, with more scheduled in August prior to distributing this title in the provinces.
Given its exceptionally long running time (6 hours), there are two ways of seeing this Rai Cinema production : two three-hour episodes are projected on adjoining screens in the same cinema or two distinct cinemas agree to screen the two-part title.
Aside from this exceptional Italian hit, French cinemas are currently in the grip of a wave of US blockbusters although three domestic titles are holding up well : Les Triplettes de Belleville [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (560,000 tickets sold over a 6-week period), The Mystery of the Yellow Room (772,000 in 6 weeks) and Our Precious Children by Benoît Cohen (232 000 in 3).
(Translated from French)
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