Entre Les Murs

Movie Night

I have recently instituted a weekly movie night, partly to get out the house and partly to get out of my wife's hair at least once a week.  Going to the movies in France is different in some subtle and some obvious ways.  Cinemas are often small, quirky and unobtrusive from the street - but can equally be big, plush and marqueed.

It used to be that Europeans had to wait six months for Hollywood to ship its productions over, meaning that not only was some of the lustre gone, but the prints themselves were scuffed and worn; now they tend to release in Europe on the same day as in North America.  In some cases they even open before.  For instance, the Salma Hayak/Penelope Cruz film which opened "domestically" last weekend, Bandidas, came and went here months ago.  Presumably the idea was that European audiences would not be put off by the latin flavour and the film could open at home with a history of rave reviews and box office success (it didn't work).

It's easier to find in Paris a wider range of movies than the Hollywood offerings that are 90% of what we see in Toronto (and 95+% of what is shown in the US).  While all the Hollywood movies get plenty of attention, there is a vibrant French film industry, and movies from elsewhere in Europe get a lot of play too.  So the films that are called "art house" at home, and would normally show up at the Carlton and rep cinemas only, are distributed almost equally with big budget American flicks.  Last night I checked out a theatre that had five Hollywood films and one French production, at which the line was longest for the latter; across the street its sister cinema was showing four French films, The Sentinel (Michael Douglas thriller), and two American limited releases.  Up the Champs Elysées, three smaller theatres were dominated by French films, leavened by Deepa Mehta's "Water" and one or two from elsewhere in Europe.  (And, okay, I went to see Miami Vice; but I could have seen any number of films that would be hard or impossible to find at home.)

For those who like trailers, French cinemasdisappointt.  There are a lot more advertisements before the show and fewer trailers; the ads and trailers are interspersed apparently at random.  On the positive side, while the published time of the showing is of course when the all the pre-feature bumf commences, the theatre usually indicates somewhere the time the feature actually begins, so you can skip the ads and not miss the show.


Finally, there's the snacks.  Some places, I am finding, do popcorn and drinks much like at home, including the ridiculous prices; but the economics of running a cinema clearly aren't the same.  I don't see nearly as many people lined up for popcorn, and the snack bar is often an afterthought, or worse.  There's always popcorn, but some theatres have only a little trolley rather than an actual snack bar.  Even where the counter is front and centre, the popcorn is probably cold and may be stale.  There is one, dubious, innovation: you can have your popcorn "salé ou sucré", meaning salty or sweet.  The sweet is kind of like caramel corn, although not as strongly flavoured.


As you may have gathered, there is a cluster of cinemas on the Champs Elysées, where I usually go if I'm not sure what I want to see.  For most purposes, we avoid the area, since it's thronged with tourists, ex-pats, and other flanneurs, to the point of being oppressively crowded.  I think many French feel the same way, since I overhear as much Italian, Spanish and Arabic as French.  It's flashy and tasteless but bright, humming and kind of fun to walk through at the end of an evening.

posted 28.9.06