Saturday evening, a small line formed at the Luminor counter, the last cinema in the Marais district, in Paris. Serious art & essay lovers know this tiny cinema of two rooms well. The moviegoers are worried today, while it is threatened with closing by the owners of the walls. An operator eviction procedure is underway.
Only 190 spectators … in a week
On this sweet summer Saturday, the Luminor program in the small room 1 Papamobilefrom Sylvain Estibal. About fifty spectators of all ages came to see the turnip with Kad Merad, an oven, which attracted 190 spectators for his first week of operation, in seven rooms in France. Only seven rooms, that is what in the cinema jargon is called a technical outing, in other words very limited, confidential, without advertising or promotion by talents, without projection to the press either.
The distributor The Jokers has paid a minimum of its contractual release in theaters, while the National Cinema Center has helped the development of the film up to a few tens of thousands of euros, on an overall budget of 1.2 million.
Bad advertising remains an advertisement
“The film is bad. Arrived at the end of the editing, we understood that there was no way out, that we would not be able to draw something that holds the road, “assumes the president of The Jokers, Manuel Chiche. Jean Bréhat, the delegate producer, of Tessalit Productions, says the same thing: “I admit, it’s missed. »»
The bad buzz around the summer flop, all the more visible since it stages a popular actor, has created a positive buzz. The Jokers confirms that “the film will soon be present on 39 copies”. Some small independent films do not benefit mostly by little more screens. “We don’t know, maybe people will end up finding it good. Or it may be one of those films that everyone ultimately wants to see, to find out, “says Manuel Chiche.
“There is no miracle”, “badly played” …
At the exit of the Luminor, after 1 h 26 of a purge to follow the abracadabrant adventures of Kad Merad in the double grotesque role of a real pope and a false pope, between Mexico and the Vatican, the spectators are almost all fittings; “There is no miracle”; “It’s messy”, “it’s very badly staged”. Some absolves the poorly written, badly filmed, badly played, its nullity: “There are not as many comedies on the church”; “Oh we have already seen worse”.
No miracle, but, nothing of a parish priest in the face of the carelessness of the film. Before the lights are reluctant in the small room of the Luminor, the session was applauded. And during the film, there were big laughter and a few hands to hit their joy in front of this improbable story, so too much. As at the time of this crazy scene – soon to be anthology? -, in which the false pope played by Kad Merad sucks the feet of Cardinals who take a very sexual fetishist pleasure …
The blessing of the nanophiles
Just for this scene, Kad Merad, whose cinema career is seriously patina, with films without much success ( 100 million !, The Christmas balls, the last breath, ultimately, the Larbin, honorary citizen ), could gain the blessing of the Nanophiles. A community of fans of “cinema distressing (but hilarious), heartbreaking (but hilarious)”, to use the words of the critic François Forestier, author of two anthologies on the turnips.
To cultivate their niche filmphilia, these fans have nanarland, the “site of the bad sympathetic films”, created in 2001 in Grenoble by five friends sharing their love of the disastrous works of 7e art. The Nanarland night, next September 20, a 12 -hour marathon of projection of turnips at the Grand Rex in Paris, a full poster.
“The best failed comedy of the year”
A nanar is a turnip that makes people laugh, sometimes at his expense or in spite of himself. As Papamobile which makes it laugh so much it wades, huge, in the release nanar which sacrifices to the big anything! He makes people laugh as we laugh with a fall, a gadin, someone who picks up. Director Sylvain Estibal is now playing, who offered a catch-up session with a second trailer, brandishing his bad film side with critical punchlines upside down: “A cult nanar in sight? »; “The best failed comedy of the year”.
Rightly? In the Jean-Gabin room of Casino Joa de Bagnoles-de-l’Orne, where there were between 25 spectators in a week for the film, some came from far to see Papamobile. The programmer of the cinema, Michel Fondain, says that “These aficionados of Nanars came disguised, one in pope, the other in parish priest, the third in good sister! »»
