The night of 12, by Dominik Moll, is a powerful, disturbing and intelligent film. “A sadly fascinating film”, titled my colleague Marc-André Lussier, who gave it a rating of 8 out of 10. “A real lesson in cinema”, wrote the colleague of the Duty François Lévesque by awarding it four and a half stars. “Warning, great movie! “, added the colleague of Radio-Canada Helen Faradji.
French criticism was in tune when The night of 12 hit theaters across the Atlantic a year ago. And the public was there: some 550,000 tickets sold. Unsurprisingly, Dominik Moll’s thriller (Harry, a friend who wishes you well) was crowned the big winner of the most recent Césars Evening with seven prizes, including those for best film and best direction.
This “American-style” thriller, with a subtle efficiency that David Fincher would not deny, with accents from the series Twin Peaks by David Lynch, seems to have a major defect for the Quebec public: it is a French film.
In its first week in theaters, despite rave reviews, The night of 12 earned only $23,000 at the box office, or about 1% of the market share, according to Cinéac, which compiles film receipts in Quebec.
Admittedly, the film was distributed in very few theaters, which is part of the problem. If Dominik Moll and his co-screenwriter Gilles Marchand had made The night of 12 a six-episode, 45-minute TV series for Netflix – in English, please – not only would Quebec critics have cried genius, but we would have talked about it as much as Succession around the office (virtual) coffee machine.
Even the French films which profit from a significant distribution do not arrive – except exception to the Asterix – to carve out a really interesting place for itself with the Quebec public.
the innocentby Louis Garrel, also critically acclaimed and nominated multiple times for the Césars Evening, was a hit in Quebec, racking up just $62,000 in revenue.
PHOTO EMMANUELLE FIRMAN, PROVIDED BY MAISON 4:3
Louis Garrel and Roschdy Zem in the innocent, a film written and directed by Louis Garrel. The two actors were nominated for the Césars, one in the category of best actor, the other in the category of best actor in a supporting role.
I’m not talking about obtuse and demanding French films, intended for die-hard cinephile audiences, but about films for the general public. the innocent is a cross between detective film, family chronicle and romantic comedy. It’s an unpretentious, funny and absolutely charming film.
For at least 25 years we have regretted the decline of French cinema here. It is true that the French star-system has not been renewed since the heyday of Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu in Quebec, a market that has been taken for granted by France.
The French cinema industry has relied too long on our cousinhood, our common language and our historical cultural heritage to ensure our loyalty, without making more effort.
French stars do not hesitate to go to the Toronto International Film Festival in September, one of the most important in the world, but are no longer in the habit of systematically stopping off in Quebec, by far the most important for French cinema in the country, in order to meet the public and the media.
Also, the pool of Quebec cinephiles who love French films has not been renewed. This has been particularly flagrant for a decade, when the decline in French cinema attendance has been observed constantly in our country. From an average of around one million spectators between 1985 and 2014, the number of Quebec moviegoers attracted by French cinema fell by almost half, even before the pandemic.
Which is surprising, given that French immigration is growing rapidly in Quebec and that many young Quebecers are more culturally connected to France than ever. You only have to see the packed houses for French rap shows to be convinced.
French cinema, unfortunately, seems to be an exception. It obtains in Quebec, for the first half of 2023, only 4.4% market share, according to Cinéac. These shares were three to four times higher 20 years ago. American cinema still takes the lion’s share, with 85% of the market share for six months.
On average, 320 French films have been produced each year for a decade. A fraction of these are distributed in Quebec (57 were shown here in 2021). Many are seen by Quebec moviegoers through festivals like Cinémania.
In 2001, some two million tickets were sold for screenings of French films in Quebec; more than for Quebec films.
Twenty years later, attendance of French films has shrunk to 264,000, according to the Observatoire de la culture et des communications du Québec.
The pandemic effect is of course there for something. People go to the cinema less in general.
The fact remains that according to Unifrance, the organization responsible for promoting French cinema abroad, Quebec was in 2021 only the 15e territory in importance for the export of French cinema, behind Brazil, the Netherlands and Australia. Around one million Belgians and Luxembourgers, out of five million French-speakers, had seen a French film in theaters in 2021.
In France, Quebec theater operators are partly pointed to the decline in French cinema here. “Exporters testify to a difficult territory, mainly oriented towards American or local productions and within which the shortening of theatrical release windows, independently of the success of the films, mechanically harms the performance of French productions”, concludes about of Quebec a statistical report from the Center national du cinema et de l’image animated (CNC), published last September.
Beyond the statistics, one fact remains: by ignoring French cinema in Quebec, for all sorts of reasons, we deprive ourselves of great works.