Studiocanal’s romantic drama Beating Hearts (L’Amour Ouf) topped the French box office in October during a strong month that saw admissions hit 15.53 million (€111.8m based on an average ticket price of €7.20), a 10.8% jump from last year according to figures from the CNC.
Audiences turned out strongly for Gilles Lellouche’s film which stars Adele Exarchopolous and Francois Civil and premiered in Competition at Cannes in May. The melodrama has sold 2.17 million tickets (approximately €15.6m) after two weeks in cinemas since its October 16 release. Strong word of mouth particularly among younger audiences helped the decades-spanning romantic drama sell more tickets in its second week with admissions reaching 1.1 million in week two, up 24% from its 944,050 opening week.
Beating Hearts is already the third-best performance for a French film of the year, behind A Little Something Extra (Pan Distribution) with 10.78 million admissions (€77.6m) and The Count of Monte-Cristo (Pathé) with 9.2 million (€66.26m), which are both topping annual admissions in a rare triumph over US blockbusters.
Other French titles giving a bump to October’s box office include Mehdi Idir and French rap artist Grand Corps Malade’s biopic Monsieur Aznavour (Pathé) starring Tahar Rahim as legendary French singer Charles Aznavour. It has garnered 615,416 admissions (€4.4m), neck and neck with Francois Ozon’s San Sebastian title When Fall Is Coming which attracted 611,770 admissions.
The Count Of Monte-Cristo added a further 501,000 tickets to its tally over the month. Two further Cannes titles were released in October and did well: Pyramide Distribution’s The Story Of Souleymane, which notched up 333,123 admissions (approximately €2.4m) and Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed Of The Sacred Fig which added 274,776 admissions to its 507,177 (€3.65m) total since its mid-September release.
“October’s excellent results were mainly due to the strength of French cinema, with three films in the top five,” remarked acting CNC president Olivier Henrard. “This explains why our cinema has maintained a historically high market share, at 45.8%, compared with 36.9% for American films.”
Over the five weeks of October, 65 films were released in France, including 13 American films and 37 French films.
Universal’s family animation The Wild Robot was the second- best performer of the month with 1.23 million tickets sold since its October 9 release. It was followed by Warner Bros.’s Joker: Folie à Deux which garnered 1 million tickets despite seeing admissions drop drastically by 65% in its second week in cinemas.
Damien Leone’s shock horror film Terrifier 3 (Factoris Films, Shadowz Films and ESC Editions) managed to make it to the October top 10 with 450,062 tickets sold (€3.24m) despite being given a rare under-18s ban. Warner Bros’ Beetlejuice Beetlejuice also kept the Halloween spirit alive with a total October tally of 439,294 admissions for a total of 1.67 million (€12m).
France’s box office has bounced back in the latter part of the year with ticket sales reaching 143.21 million for the first 10 months of the year, down by just 3.2% compared to last year.
Coming up to boost the end of the year box office are buzzy awards season films including Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II (Paramount), Wicked Part I (Universal) and Conclave (SND). Festival favourites making their French forays into cinemas include The Substance (Metropolitan Filmexport), Grand Tour (Tandem), and Rough Diamond (Pyramide) joining Palme d’Or-winning Anora (Le Pacte) released on October 30.