SPOTLIGHT
What a beautiful year for cinema
A group of crowd-pleasing European films have triumphed in their home markets this year, often outpacing Hollywood titles. Screen International deputy editor Louise Tutt looks at the biggest hits and the surprise successes
Home is where the heart is for most of the big European hits this year. Titles such as Dany Boon’s French culture-clash comedy Nothing To Declare (Rien A Déclarer), Gennaro Nunziante’s Italian charmer What A Beautiful Day (Che Bella Giornata), Kokowääh, the latest romantic com- edy from German superstar Til Schweiger, and Santiago Segura’s Torrente 4: Lethal Crisis, have all enjoyed stellar performances in their local markets. All are comedies, and all are very culturally
specifi c. They have all made most of their money in their national markets. The best chance most of them have of finding a sizeable audience beyond their own borders may be to be remade and recalibrated to national tastes. Nothing To Declare, released by Pathé, stars
Boon and Benoît Poelvoorde as rival customs officers of the France-Belgium border. It has grossed ¤50.1m in France alone (and ¤6m in Bel- gium) to make it the biggest fi lm in France this year to date. In Italy, Medusa opened What A Beautiful Day
in January to see it become the most successful Italian fi lm of all time, garnering ¤43.8m in its home market. The good-humoured, engaging story of a buffoonish security guard at a Milan cathedral who falls in love with a supposed ter- rorist, was embraced by critics and audiences in need of light relief from the tawdry real-life exploits of Italy’s now-former prime minister. Indeed, What A Beautiful Day has taken nearly double the amount Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 has in the territory. Following his two Rabbit Without Ears (Kein-
ohrhasen and Zweiohrküken) fi lms, Schweiger’s Kokowääh is the latest massive hit for the Ger- man writer-director-producer-actor. In this fi lm, he brought his daughter along for the ride to star as the little girl who knocks on his door claiming to be his character’s daughter from a one-night- stand. It has taken the lion’s share of its box offi ce in Germany to gross ¤30.3m and was second only to Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides in the country as of October 30.
64 n European Film Awards 2011 In Spain, Segura delivered the fourth episode
detailing the popular exploits of his titular crea- tion, the crude and crass private detective José Luis Torrente. Torrente 4 broke box offi ce records in its first weekend and has gone on to gross nearly ¤20m for Warner Bros Spain. It is the highest- grossing fi lm in Spain this year to date, ahead of both Harry Potter 8 and Pirates Of The Caribbean 4. A great deal of the appeal of Torrente 4: Lethal Crisis is down to the cast: an array of popular Spanish fi gures, from comedians to footballers. Similarly, the star of What A Beautiful Day is renowned TV comedian Checco Zalone, and in the UK and the Netherlands, two of the biggest films of the year are film versions of popular, homegrown TV series.
However, few in the UK predicted quite the success of The Inbetweeners Movie, which has grossed ¤52.6m in its home territory. The story of four hapless but likeable teenagers on a sex- and booze-fuelled holiday was released by Entertainment Film Distributors in mid- August, in the middle of the summer holidays. As the TV series enjoys a cult — but not huge — following, it was the positive word of mouth on the fi lm which propelled it to within a royal whisker of The King’s Speech in the UK market (The King’s Speech grossed ¤53.5m). It is the third-biggest fi lm of the year in its home territory. (Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is the biggest). Similarly, the Dutch sensa- tion of the year is Gooische Vrouwen (literally, Gooische Women), a fi lm version of a now-cancelled Dutch TV series. With echoes of both Desperate Housewives and Sex And The City, it fol- lows the lives, loves and friend- ships of wealthy women.
four Nothing To Declare
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