Entre Les Murs

French Cinemas

To celebrate the completion of another bathroom, I took myself to a movie today. French movie theatres are a little different from those back in Canada. Firstly, they don’t always look like theatres; they could be behind any old store front. Today, I walked right by it even though I was studying the addresses carefully.

I bought my ticket for the eleven o’clock show – there‘s another difference: they have as many matinees as they do evening shows – and was escorted to my seat by a boy who could not have been more than ten years old. It was a smallish auditorium and the crowd was perhaps a dozen, mostly kids with their parents. When I entered, a woman was addressing the audience, but interrupted her presentation to give me a smile and a “Bonjour Monsieur”. She seemed to be explaining something about the movie, but by the time I had settled myself and was paying attention she was on to a spiel about the theatre and their various programs. There were no advertisements or trailers, but I think that’s unusual even for France.

Another difference: no snack bar. Funny that the French, so passionate about their food and drink, don’t have elaborate rituals about movie food (although I noticed one father/son had brought a baguette). In this case, well, King Kong is a three hour movie, so no snacks was a bit of a problem.

And one final difference: I can’t remember the last time I attended a movie in North America where the film broke in the middle, and the lights came up for ten minutes while they fixed it. These days Europe sometimes gets Hollywood films before they open domestically; but more often, and especially with the blockbusters, the prints screened in Europe have been through the projector more often the German soldiers through Alsace.

What I am still wondering about is: why weren't all those kids at the movie in school?


Can you spot the movie theatre in this picture? (Hint: there's a picture of King Kong and a Tyrannosaurus Rex to the left of the yellow awning.)

posted 17.2.06