A fantastic score. With more than a million admissions ― 1,000,108 to be exact ― in just one week of release, Gilles Lellouche's “L'Amour ouf” fills theaters and gets off to a great start. Since its release last Wednesday, the film, edited and shortened since its selection in competition at Cannes, has even topped the box office every day without exception. A public enthusiasm which offers him solid prospects…
The feature film, which casts a five-star cast ― Adèle Exarchopoulos, François Civil, Mallory Wanecque, Malik Frikah, Alain Chabat, Benoît Poelvoorde, Vincent Lacoste… ― and tells a story of love and violence over two periods, has multiplied box office prowess since its release. Éric Marti, director of Comscore, a company that is a reference in box office analysis, notes that he records “an average of more than 1,000 spectators per screen, something that has become extremely rare for such large combinations of theaters ― 631 precisely. This year, only A little something extras, Vice-Versa 2 et Le Comte de Monte Cristo have achieved it…”
It is therefore an attendance worthy of very big American blockbusters which touches “Phew Love”, and the feat does not stop there. Third best French start of the year after “Un p'tit truc en plus” and “The Count of Monte Cristo”, Gilles Lellouche's fiction recorded, on Monday, a day known to be very low at the cinema, “20% of admissions more than on Friday, and 50% more than on the Wednesday of its release”, which also turns out to be very rare. “This means that the enthusiasm is real, and that the reception and word of mouth are very good,” continues Éric Marti.
This increasing score is also to be credited to the All Saints' Day holidays, which began on Saturday. But who says school holidays says young audience: the marketing research institute Vertigo has calculated that a third of the film's audience is made up of 15-24 year olds, in the same proportion as the big names from American franchises. The specialist site Allociné also noted that a phenomenon on the TikTok network had developed shortly after the release of the feature film, with young spectators filming themselves showering the story with praise.
Will Gilles Lellouche's romance progress in the same proportions in the coming weeks, and how far can it go in the face of competition, notably that of “Monsieur Aznavour”, in theaters this Wednesday, signed by a duo of directors, Mehdi Idir and Grand Corps Malade, whose previous creations were a hit with young people?
Director Comscore believes in it: “The two films do not represent the same type of appeal for this audience and, in a very strong market context, they will rather be complementary. With such a score in the first week, fifteen days of vacation to follow and word of mouth which seems to be working in full force, Love phew will probably reach 3 million admissions, and it can then aim for 4 or 5 million…” With at least one certainty: that of appearing, at the end of the year, in the Top 10 of the most viewed feature films from 2024…
