Comic-Book Warriors Defend the Honor of French Cinema

Swamped in 1998 by the wake of Hollywood’s “Titanic,” French filmdom counterattacked this week with the costliest movie ever made in Voltaire’s mother tongue, the adventures of two beloved comic book heroes, Asterix and Obelix.

Just as the mythical Gallic warriors and their village managed to single-handedly hold out against besieging Romans in 50 BC, the French cinema industry is hoping the $49-million “Asterix and Obelix Against Caesar,” packed with special effects, will beat back modern-day celluloid invaders from across the sea.

For the highbrow Paris daily Le Monde, which devoted a page to the film and its Wednesday release, the movie is both means and metaphor for this country’s resistance to “American cinematographic imperialism.” The left-wing daily Liberation, evoking this nation’s defense against Germany in World War II, called it “the Maginot line of the French cultural exception against Hollywood’s legions.”

The picture, which opened to large crowds across France, stars this country’s most popular male lead, Gerard Depardieu, as the girthful and superhumanly strong Obelix, and comic actor Christian Clavier as wily, bantam-sized Asterix.

Roberto Benigni, director and star of this year’s Italian entry for the foreign film Oscar, “Life Is Beautiful,” appears as a scheming Roman traitor, Detritus, in the film produced by Claude Berri and directed by Claude Zidi.

The movie was given massive pre-release publicity, including plenty of plugs on French TV news programs and front-page spreads in newspapers. Despite that, and the sort of patriotic talk found in Le Monde, most critics gave the picture only two cheers or deemed it an outright turkey.

“I am a traitor to the French cinema,” confessed one dissatisfied movie writer, Andre Bercoff of the tabloid daily France-Soir, who found the picture a bore.

The nub of the problem: how to bring to the screen the magic of the 30 comic book albums that Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo began creating in 1959.

Asterix albums have sold 280 million copies in 77 countries and 57 languages. In France, they are an integral part of popular culture. French youngsters quickly learn that Asterix and his friends get the strength to resist the Roman hordes by imbibing a magic potion brewed by a Druid, and that the Gauls, ancestors of the modern French, feared only one thing: the sky falling on their heads.

Over the years, the two brave warriors, who are good-hearted but prone to bickering and feuding, have been embraced as the quintessence of the French character. Hence the great disappointment of many of the critics, who found “Asterix and Obelix” to be “old hat” or simply “not funny.”

“The transformation from comic book to film is a fatal blow to the dream,” was the judgment of Liberation. For the reviewer from Le Monde, the film ironically needs American-style special effects, which make up 30 minutes of its one hour and 45 minutes, as its version of a magic potion.

With many schools closed in France on Wednesdays, 446,724 tickets to the movie were sold on the first day, the best opening box office in French history, according to the Agence France-Presse news agency. In comparison, “Men in Black” sold 357,622 tickets in its first day on French screens and “Titanic” sold 206,000.

“Asterix and Obelix” will need to draw an estimated 7 million spectators, a third of the French audience for “Titanic,” to break even. In a newspaper interview, Berri predicted that the film will easily accomplish that.

“All the elements are there to make it a popular success, from 7 to 77 years old,” Berri said. “I admit that with fewer than 10 million entries, I’ll be a bit disappointed. Then, the important thing is what is going to happen abroad. Can this film go around the world?”

In Asterix’s homeland, people in the profession are watching keenly to see whether Berri’s production will counter a disturbing trend at the box office. Last year, 15% more of the French went to the movies than in 1997, but it wasn’t to see locally made films. French films’ market share, 34.5% in 1997, collapsed to only 27% to 28% of the 170 million tickets sold in 1998, according to preliminary statistics released by the French National Cinematographic Center. Scores of the 150-odd French releases last year sank with little trace.

One major reason for the erosion of the French market share was the success of “Titanic.” According to the center, James Cameron’s film gained an even larger share of audiences in France than in the United States, accounting for 12% to 13% of all tickets sold in 1998, compared with 7% to 8% in the United States.

This year, an association representing 70% of France’s movie theaters has expressed hope that it will be “the valorous Gallic warrior Asterix” that entices people to the theaters.

Until now, the most expensive French-language film had been “The Corridors of Time: The Visitors II,” a zany comedy staring Clavier and Jean Reno, which cost $26 million, according to the cinematographic center. Director Luc Besson’s 1997 release, “The Fifth Element,” a sci-fi fantasy starring Bruce Willis, had an $85-million budget but was made in English to appeal to the United States and other foreign markets, where dubbed movies often fare badly.