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| On his travels: a scene from Jean-Pierre Jeunet's The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet. |
With the buyers and sellers safely despatched from Paris to Sundance this weekend it's the turn of the international media to move into the Grand Hotel for interviews with more than 100 actors and directors lining up for films to be released shortly in different countries as part of the 16th Unifrance Rendez-vous With French Cinema.
Among the talent talking up their films is Audrey Tautou (for the third part in the Pot Luck series, Chinese Puzzle, as well as Michel Gondry’s Blue Indigo after Boris Vian); Tautou’s Amelie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet with his new title The Young And Prodigious T.S. Spivet with Kyle Catlett, Helena Bonham Carter, Judy Davis and Callum Keith Rennie; Ludivine Sagnier for the romcom Love Is In The Air and former footballer Eric Cantona joining an orgy with Beatrice Dalle in You And The Night.
There are more than 130 journalists in attendance, mostly from Europe but also Quebec and Israel. During the junket there will be more than 1,000 interviews taking place.
The roll call of talent is impressive: Emmanuelle Bercot, Juliette Binoche, Louise Bourgoin, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Jacques Doillon, Bruno Dumont, Albert Dupontel, Anne Fontaine, Sandrine Kiberlain, Claude Lanzmann, Bertrand Tavernier, Karin Viard, Katell Quillevere and Rebecca Zlotowski.
At a cocktail party held at the Royal Automobile Club of France overlooking the Place de la Concorde, Unifrance president Jean-Paul Salomé (scheduled to visit the Glasgow Film Festival with his black comedy Playing Dead) outlined the highs and lows of the performance of French cinema last year.
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| Eric Cantona - sexual frolics with Beatrice Dalle in You And The Night. |
He noted that after an exceptional year in 2012 when French films posted a record performance with 144.1 million admissions in foreign markets, ticket sales fell sharply in 2013 to a total of 50 million admissions. Salomé stressed that it was not just the backlash effect of following a bumper year but the period generally was one of “relatively weak performance.”
The major successes were Cannes Palme d’Or winners Amour, and Blue Is The Warmest Colour as well as The Gilded Cage, Paulette, Renoir, Rust And Bone and In The House.
On the plus side French films set a new record in China with almost 5.2 million admissions last year and maintained their position as the prime alternative to American films. Salomé pointed out some satisfying surprises such as A Lady In Paris with Jeanne Moreau which scored with Japanese audiences (more than 10,000 admissions) while UK film fans turned out in force (140,000) for François Ozon’s In The House.
The online initiative my French Film Festival.com returns until 17 February in its fourth edition featuring a selection of first and second time directors and a selection of shorts. Last year 750,000 viewings were clocked up in 189 countries with a 25 per cent increase in paid viewings. In some territories the films are offered free of charge (such as Latin America, Poland, China, Russia and Turkey).
At the end of the internet festival four prizes will be awarded by various juries including one made up of foreign journalists and another composed of film-makers presided over by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and including the UK’s Lynne Ramsay, Marco Bellocchio from Italy, Frédéric Fonteyne (Belgium) and Anurwag Kashyap (India).
Salomé was in suitably jubilant mood to round off the evening by pointing to France’s Oscar potential with the animated hit Ernest And Celestine in with shout in the Best Animation category (directed by Benjamin Renner, Vincent Patar and Stéphane Aubier), Gilles Bourdos’s Renoir a contender for best foreign film and the short by actor Xavier Legrand, Avant Que De Tout Perdre, with Léa Drucker and Denis Menochet competing for Best Short Film, Live Action.
