In a box office still dominated by Love phew, The Substance of Coralie Fargeat enjoys her buzz, while Herethe new Robert Zemeckis, experiences an expected failure.
For its fourth week of operation, Love phew confirms its status as a heavyweight in French cinema. Gilles Lellouche's film retains first place in the weekly ranking with 703,000 additional admissions. At the same time, the feature film continues to climb into the top 10 of the biggest hits of the year in France. With its total of 3,740,000 tickets sold, it has just taken sixth place on the podium, previously held by the 3,716,000 of Deadpool & Wolverine. His next target is none other than Dune 2 and its 4.1 million entries.
This success story is not alone, since second place this week is held by another French film: Mr Aznavourwhich has just added 410,000 curious people in its third week of release. The biopic led by Tahar Rahim has so far recorded 1.48 million admissions.
Take the Substance, it's good
But what about The Substance ? Coralie Fargeat's horror film, a real explosion at the Cannes Film Festival (from which it walked away with the screenplay prize), was awaited around the corner. Although the feature film is a British-American co-production, its French director and its shooting in France have logically made the territory one of the most important for the film, beyond its buzz in the United States.
Result, this fanfare return of body horror did not disappoint, since the proposal rose in sixth place in the French weekly ranking, with 213,000 entries (including 13,000 previews). The most impressive thing is that it was released on 270 screens, thus obtaining an average per copy of 790 spectators (the second best score of the week).
For a work of auteurist and extreme horror, this is frankly encouraging. Coralie Fargeat's previous film, Revengehad finished its exploitation with 38,000 entries. Or to take another example of a horror film awarded at Cannes, we can compare this performance to that of Titaniumthe Palme d’Or for Julia Ducournau. Its first week concluded with 88,000 tickets sold, for a total of 303,000 spectators, which The Substance will easily exceed.
On the other hand, if there is one belly that hurts a lot, it is that of Herethe new film by Robert Zemeckis. While the American press assassinated this crazy project led by Tom Hanks and Robin Wright – which also had a mediocre start in the country at less than 5 million dollars – its lack of communication and press ended up. buried across the world.
With barely 3,300 admissions on its first day of release, this is a new record (in the bad sense of the word) for the director of Back to the future. If Zemeckis has lost popularity with ever stranger and more experimental cinema (Welcome to Marwen had only started with 11,000 spectators, barely 20,000 for The Walk), his latest attempt can only hope to be rediscovered after this sacrificed theatrical release.
In the end, the feature film ends its first week with 41,000 admissions. At the same stage, Marwen was at 81,000, The Walk at 97,000, and suffice to say that we are very far from the 500,000 entries of Forrest Gump. This other film with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright ended its run with 4 million spectators, while Robert Zemeckis' biggest success in France remains Who wants Roger Rabbit's skin? with 5.8 million tickets sold. It's sad, but the filmmaker is well on his way to achieving one of his worst scores in France.
