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Back to cinema: "Mourir can wait" and "Dune" are a hit, "Stillwater" and "The Origin of the world" are disillusioning

2021-10-25T08:37:56.945Z


If several new products have been sold out since the beginning of September, others, and not the least, are looking grim. Retail review.


It is no longer a French feature film which is, at this time, the most viewed film of the year, but an American blockbuster: since Wednesday, “Dune”, released on September 15, is now the biggest success. 2021, just ahead of "Kaamelott Premier section", in theaters since July 21, champion of admissions until then.

Success in the middle of an attendance which, since the beginning of the summer, shows overall "a decrease of 21% on average compared to the years 2017, 2018 and 2019", details Marc-Olivier Sebbag, General Delegate of the Federation national cinema in France, which prefers to be positive.

“80% of the usual attendance, given the context, it's not that bad,” he says.

Especially if we compare to other sectors which had to close everything like us - theaters, restaurants, airlines - and which did not find the same attendance rate… ”

The big winners

Since the start of the school year, four films have monopolized the top of the attendance rankings:

“Dune”

(2.65 million viewers),

"Die can wait"

(2.16 million),

"BAC North"

(2.1 million) and

"Black box"

(1.03 million).

The last two offer themselves the luxury of being a hit in the long term: 63,000 admissions from 13 to 20 October for the Marseille thriller by Cédric Jimenez, 67,000 for the aeronautical thriller with Pierre Niney, astonishing scores for releases that have had held on August 18 and September 8.

Thus, only the very large American machines with stars or strong French films are doing well. This would tend to demonstrate that the health pass has no real impact on blockbusters.

Deceptions

Some see the glass half empty, others half full.

“OSS 117”

and its 1.6 million admissions can thus be considered as one of the successes of the summer, but many analysts see it as a half-failure given the expectation it aroused. Ditto for

"Shang-Chi and the legend of the ten rings"

...

For other films "with high potential", the discussion unfortunately does not even have to be.

Flag Day

 "

, by and with Sean Penn, released on September 29, painfully accumulates 59,000 admissions in three weeks - a real disaster. It is not terrible either for

"Stillwater"

, with Matt Damon and Camille Cottin: 290,000 spectators since September 22. And things don't go very well for

Ridley Scott's

“The Last Duel”

and its prestigious poster - Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Adam Driver: 147,000 curious in a week.

French films are in the same situation.

"The Origin of the World"

, by and with Laurent Laffitte, will have seduced only 226,000 fans from September 15 to October 20, seeing its attendance collapse after its first week.

Same route for

“Everything went well”

by François Ozon with Sophie Marceau and André Dussollier (242,000 admissions since September 22).

It is undoubtedly this category of feature films that the constraint of the health pass hurts very much.

Too much competition

Currently, many distributors are “destocking” their productions which were piling up on their shelves because of the pandemic. “The Origin of the World” has thus seen its release shifted several times over the past 18 months. Suddenly, the battle rages between them, and each comes to compete against each other by "dropping" one of its nuggets every Wednesday on the market. Result: the lifespan of a feature film in this category does not exceed one week. Unless "if the film is off to a big start and has good word of mouth, like" Black Box "," analyzes Jean-Baptiste Davi, sales director at Studiocanal.

This destocking also hits the mainstream of auteur films - apart from a few rare survivors such as "The Law of Tehran" - with modest budgets, and which usually operate in the long term.

Victims of this current overflow, many quickly disappear from theaters.

This is particularly the case for "A story of love and desire", "Les amours d'Anaïs", "The Third War", "This music does not play for anyone" ... all with headliners or worn by critics, and all below 100,000 entries.

Which makes some say that the habits of the French may have changed during the pandemic, and that they would have less desire for the big screen.

Source: leparis

All life articles on 2021-10-25

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