Filmmakers in France Ask for Mercy

In the first Hundred Years’ War, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. In the second Hundred Years’ War, the one fought between filmmakers and reviewers since the birth of movies, incensed French directors are ready to light their own bonfire of the critics.

Distressed by declining box office at home, French directors are blaming some of the country’s most respected film reviewers for favoring American movies and gratuitously attacking local pictures. In a volcanic debate that has roiled through the country’s newspapers, magazines and television screens for several months, the directors emerged last month with a manifesto demanding that all negative reviews be held back until after opening weekend--at least five days following the usual Wednesday opening.

According to the directors, the idea was to give films a grace period before negative reviews turned away potential audiences and over-hasty distributors withdrew poorly performing films. Or to paraphrase the 18th century French philosopher Voltaire: I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it--only please, not now. Positive reviews could presumably run on a film’s opening day.

French critics not surprisingly said non way. “The proposal is frightening and inadmissible,” shot back the daily Liberation. The directors, propped up by government subsidies and quotas restricting foreign film imports, are acting like “spoiled children,” protested Serge Kaganski of the alternative culture magazine Les Inrockuptibles.

The origin of the quarrel reads like something out of a French boulevard farce. In October, Patrice Leconte, the well-respected director of the cult film “Les Bronzes” (“French Fried Vacation” in the U.S.) and “Ridicule,” nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film in 1997, drafted a letter to colleagues complaining that some local critics acted like “premeditated assassins” intent on killing off commercial French cinema. He called for a general directors’ meeting to resolve the problem.

Instead of going out only to fellow directors, however, the complaint was inadvertently faxed into the enemy camp, to Liberation, Le Monde, Telerama, a trio of publications Leconte dubbed the “Bermuda triangle” for French filmmakers, as well as other mass-circulation media.

Liberation and others published the letter and a very public debate ensued, leading ultimately to the directors’ call for a moratorium on negative reviews. In the outcry following publication, the draft declaration was repudiated by the Society of Auteurs, Directors and Producers. Although the directors have dropped their demand for a “pact of coexistence” with local critics, the controversy still bubbles close to the surface of the movie community.

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For years, French filmmakers have developed a somewhat justified tendency to see themselves embattled on all sides. Alone among its European neighbors, France has kept up a steady stream of film production, churning out 155 releases in 1999, according to figures revealed last week by the National Center for Cinema (or CNC in France), the government agency in charge of tracking and subsidizing French film.

By comparison, Germany, despite a population of 80 million compared to France’s 60 million, produced only 70 films, according to Michael Naumann, the German minister of culture. (The U.S. produces some 600 feature films a year.) With the exception of the British film industry, which has been undergoing a resurgence in past years, Europe’s movie business has been largely in decline, despite the standout successes of Italy’s “Life Is Beautiful” and Spain’s “All About My Mother.”

It’s been a rough few years for French cinema. In 1999, French films accounted for only 30% of the country’s box-office attendance, up slightly from the 27% figure in 1998, but still trailing well behind the 55% captured by American movies last year and the 63% of 1998, the year of “Titanic.”

But the outlook for French films is even worse than the numbers indicate, since local films are attracting fewer young viewers than ever.

“The preferences of those under 30 to go spontaneously to American films is a little disquieting,” warned CNC director Jean-Pierre Hoss in an interview with Agence France-Presse.

If American movies outdistance local films, it’s for good reason, counter French critics. “The average American movie is distinctly better than the average French film,” Kaganski explained in a critics’ round table recently organized by Liberation. Olivier Seguret, chief film reviewer for Liberation, acknowledged that local critics treat American filmmakers better than their Gallic counterparts. Take “There’s Something About Mary,” pointed out Seguret, “a banal comedy that made me laugh a lot.” He probably would not enjoy a French film in the same style as much, he admitted.

“Perhaps French cinema bothers us because we’re too close to it,” the critic explained.

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Some French films, like “Asterix et Obelix” with Gerard Depardieu and Laetitia Casta, draw record audiences in spite of overwhelmingly unflattering reviews. “Asterix” was the No. 1 film in France last year, outpacing “Stars Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace” and earning it a place among the top 10 French films of all time. In addition, the film may well prove a successful cinematic export of 1999, as the goofy comic sendup has scored impressive audiences in Germany, Italy and Spain, according to recently released figures from Unifrance, the agency charged with promoting French film abroad.

Other local films, notably Luc Besson’s “The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc,” a controversial portrait of the blood-lusting martyr bent on revenge, were respectfully praised by French critics and generally panned abroad. The film, released by Sony, was a box-office bomb in the U.S.

Besson, “Asterix” producer Claude Berri, not to mention younger directors like Mathieu Kassovitz and Erick Zonca, have steered clear of the controversy, viewing the flap between critics and filmmakers as an unnecessary distraction from the more pressing need to make movies the public wants to see.

The fault for declining audiences lies not with the critics, nor entirely with the quality of French films, argued Seguret, but also partly to changing patterns of movie distribution. “The system that pulls films [from theaters] in a matter of days if they’re not performing well is relatively new to France,” according to the reviewer. “Instead of demanding that the distributors give them the necessary grace period to keep their films running, the filmmakers are turning on the critics,” he said.

Apart from an overall preference for American films among French critics, what upsets Leconte and fellow directors are the egregiously gratuitous and downright pornographic attacks that all too frequently pass for serious criticism. When one critic wrote that Catherine Breillat, a respected director, deserved to “be jumped” by adult movie star Rocco Siffredi, an actor in her serious film “Romance,” it proved too much for famed director Bertrand Tavernier.

“That’s a guy I’d like to punch in the face,” a seething Tavernier responded.

Even some critics agree that the attacks have gotten out of hand. “There are things that are said of actors and actresses that would never be said of even the worst politicians,” maintained Jean-Pierre Lavoignat, editor of the monthly movie magazine Studio. “Behind all this theoretical debate are some very real personal humiliations.”

Yet even Leconte, the man who started all the fuss, readily acknowledges a debt to the local critics for spreading the word about new talent.