French comedy smashes records, heads for Hollywood

You might remember a little feel-good film that I wrote about when it charmed northern France on its opening in February. The comedy, called Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, or welcome to Ch'ti country, has done spectacularly well. It is on the verge of becoming the most successful film ever shown in French cinemas and Hollywood has bought it. Will Smith is going to make an Americanized version called Welcome to the Sticks.

The phenomenon of the Ch'ti film, starring and directed by Dany Boon, has become a feel-good story for France as it grumbles its way through a morose spring. Over 20 million cinema tickets have been sold so far. A month ago, it overtook la Grande Vadrouille, the 1966 Louis de Funès comedy, as France's biggest native box office hit. It is certain to overtake the 1998 blockbuster Titanic, the all-round record-holder which scored 20.75 million cinema tickets. It has made 121 million euros so far, which is not bad for a film made on an 11-million euro budget and shown only in a country of 60 million plus a few Belgians and Swiss.

The politicians have all climbed onto the Ch'ti bandwagon, fêting Dany Boon and singing its praises. President Sarkozy held a showing of the film at the Elysée palace. The movie is a version of the standard fable about a town dweller  -- in this case from the Mediterranean sunbelt  -- who discovers that backwood provincials have a heart of gold. The bumpkins are the Ch'tis, the beer-swilling northerners who live near the Belgian border. The film has seduced the country with its high spirits and its celebration of old-fashioned provincial Frenchness.

Such comedies, which play on dialects and regional quirks, do not travel. In the USA, a dubbed version of the Ch'tis would make the university theatres and art houses where most French films are usually consigned. But an Americanized version of Boon's film has a good chance of scoring, if the producers can keep to its spirit.

French films have inspired far more Hollywood movies than those of any other countries. The practice goes back to the earliest days and a study by the Writers' Guild turned up 29 US feature films from the mid-1960s to 2000 that were adapted from French ones. The more serious French oeuvres often suffer badly from the Hollywood treatment, with simplification and happy endings, but comedies often do well well. The 1970s and 80s were rich in the field. Jean Renoir's 1932 classic, Boudu Saved from Drowning, became Down and Out in Beverly Hills in 1986 with Nick Nolte, Richard Dreyfuss and Bette Midler. Others included Cousin, Cousine, Three Men and a Baby, The Woman in Red and Birds of a Feather. When French directors attempt to adapt their own material, it usually fails.  Jean-Marie Poiré discovered that when he produced Just Visiting (2001), an Americanized version of his hugely successful 1993 time-travel caper les Visiteurs. 

Boon said in Cannes this week that he will serve as an adviser on the US version of the Ch'tis but he had no desire to direct it. "Will Smith is going to star in it. It will perhaps be a story about a New Yorker who goes to the Mexican frontier. It doesn't necessarily have to be about someone heading towards a cold place," he said. "They will adapt it to suit them. It is simply a comedy about tolerance, tenderness and humanity, about accepting the other person rather than rejecting them.

In my humble opinion, I suggest that the Mexican idea is wrong. The American equivalent of the French film would be a southern California resident being reassigned to some bleak suburb in the old midwestern rustbelt.

[Will Smith]

Comments

[azloon]

[southern California resident being reassigned to the Detroit suburbs...] CB

i don't know, Charles. the Detroit suburbs are pretty slick -- the grosse pointes, birmingham -- not really in the grimy image of Detroit as the world knows it (and as it really is).

a southern californian would only have to order an down parka from Yvon Chouinard's toney Patagonia catalogue, and he'd slide into those 'burbs' quite comfortably.

OTOH, inner city DEE-Troit? the 'hood? the Ban-Loo by the lake?

now we're talking!

[tf]

The formula in question may be the story of a city slicker, but the town that the hero leaves, Salon-de-Provence (pop. 37,000), is hardly the big city. You point out that a film about a New Yorker would not be equivalent, and it's not only for climatic reasons. This is not a fable about a Parisian, a Lyonnais, or a Marseillais. The action remains resolutely at the periphery from beginning to end. The big cities are only shown on the map as obstacles to be bypassed on the orbital highway. It is this celebration of provinciality on both ends of France that constitutes a large part of the movie's appeal.

[DS]

I agree with your comment about the start and end locations - but isn't the slightly odd to our eyes choice really about selling loads of tickets to the latino population?. Amazing how often people forget that hollywood is there first foremost and exclusively to make loads of money

[rocket]

CB

Isn't it?

Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis

Not Bienvenue les Ch'tis.

ROTFL - Hollywood trying as usual to be Eurocool probably thinks Ch'ti means stick in French.

Ch'ti...Ch'ti(k)= Stick

Any what's the Ch'tis schtick. I haven't seen the movie yet.

I will wait until it comes out on DVD (will borrow it and then not return it) so I can watch it in the comfort of my 10m2 apartment with the 50 other Rabbis that live here.

Moins chèeeere!

[Thanks Rocket, I've corrected my speedwriting typo. Actually it's a good film but not a patch on La Grande Vadrouille, IMHO, CB]

[john g]

I can't wait till the film is released, if Will Smith is in it you've got a fighting chance of it being a hit!

[azloon]

In the u.s., with Will Smith as honcho, it will probably have to have an inter-racial theme. southerners moving north, westerners moving east has no energy in it. that might have worked fifty years ago.

now it's racial tension that would better provide that dramatic spark. a pampered white finding himself in an ghetto environment might do it, where the whtite would discover stereotypes not to be true, find acceptance and actually enjoy himself. far-fetched perhaps, but might work on film, and not totally implausible -- a sort of serious version of the 'The Jerk' with Steve Martin.

Rocket, when did you decide to abandon your comfortable bourgeois existence and move to the zionist ghetto? are all these guys who look like woody allen as funny as he?

(allen has a very funny piece in this week's New Yorker -- his fiction, regrettably, is now better than his recent films).

[Dominique]

Azloon,

One point for you on "les chtis" : one of the two main caracters (the guy moving north) is played by Kad Merad, a french-algerian actor, born in Algeria and very successfull in France at the moment. That adds an hidden inter-racial / inter-cultural theme on it, and might explain a part of the huge success : an assimilated algerian.

[azloon]

Dominique --

Will Smith must have picked up on this.

[dot king]

Azloon, you don't have to go and see either the uSA or the french film, you've summed it up perfectly. and Steve Martin would be perfect - contact the producer immediately.

Dominique: how can you have a "hidden theme" and why would you? Kad Merad doesn't have "French-Algerian" tattooed on his forehead and THAT difference wasn't a part of the film, unless of course you want it there.

Honestly, who cares where an actor playing a part comes from or what nationality s/he is unless it's relevant to the plot (like taking your clothes off for a starlet:))?

In "Guess who's coming to dnner" it mattered that Sydney Poitier was a black actor, ditto "In the heat of the night" - there was direct relevance, the "target" being racial prejudice. In "Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis" the incomprehension comes from in-France regional stereotyping.

I've read all sorts of erudite analyses of the Dany Boon film, but I don't see why I can't just be happy to have laughed from the beginning to the end almost without stopping - and the friend I went with, who wisely got tickets in advance, has the family name Bailleul, and she also enjoyed her trip down Memory Lane.

[Dominique]

Dot,

Don't get me wrong. I just gave an element to Azloon. I said "hidden theme" because it is not a theme made visible on the movie. But, we can just notice some kind of "subliminal" message in Kad Merad's role : who cares? (this is the very message you did herald yourself). So, we agree.

[qwerty]

I think Dominique has a point, even if those who made the film didn't have it in mind. It's double-layered therefore could be more interesting: the fully integrated 2nd generation immigrant, probably urban, meets the ploucs (transl: red-necks, fly-overs) in another region.

Having said that, I haven't seen the film and don't plan to, because French comedies do'nt work for me (except maybe le "Diner de Cons").

[azloon]

QWERTY --

Have you gone back and watched Mr. Hulot's Holiday (Vacances de Monsieur Hulot) -- an 'old as dirt' slapstick french comedy? (I sometimes wonder if the french took to jerry lewis, hoping he'd be an american version of Jacque Tati -- there has to be SOME explanation for the jerry lewis phenomenon in France but it may remain one of life's great mysteries).

i hesitate to watch "Holiday' again because my memory of it is good, i don't want to spoil it.

not long ago, i wanted to know how some of the great old movies of my youth 'held up' so i asked a 20-something young woman friend if she had seen "Shane" with Alan Ladd (circa 1954). she not unexpectedly said she hadn't. so i rented it for her, and when she eventually 'blew it off' and returned it to me, i took it home and watched it myself.

it help up quite well, i thot, tho i must say, the awe i felt when i first saw it had diminished.

it occurs to me right now that until Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men, Jake Palance in Shane was movie history's greatest villian (there's just something about psycho killers roaming the vast american West that sends chills down the spine).

See "No Country" is you haven't.

[Francois D]

I saw the film twice. First time just few kilometers from the darkest scenes (in the mining area at Bruay-Bethune) with a population 100% chti .
The second time in the south of france with my parents-in-law, because my wife is from the south.
In the north, risks for the scene maker was to hurt sensitivity'people. They started to laugh with jokes in dialect.
In the south, they don't laugh for that because they d'nt understand ch'ti, so laughs were motivated by burlesques scenes. For that there is no need to understand spoken language as in Charlie Chaplin's films.
For an American adaptation, I do not know what region to choose but what is certain is that the author must have lived a long time in this region. For England, there are the same old industrial regions based on coal with strong accents..
I regreat not having seen the film in Paris to compare with the other two. But perhaps, it's better.

[Ros]

This article is very interesting but what does Charles mean saying " It is on the verge of becoming the most successful film ever shown in French cinemas - what on earth does he mean by EVER + "and Hollywood has bought it" - does he mean "BECAUSE" Hollywood has bought it?

[Gill]

Azloon you are denying yourself a great pleasure by not watching Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot again. Some friends and I recently watched it again (for the third or fourth time) and it was still laugh out loud throughout. There is so much going on in this film that there were details I had not noticed before (or had forgotten). I recommend that you give it another airing. Jacques Tati's other films are also a delight but in my humble opinion "Les Vacances" is the best.

[Daniel Strohl]

Azloon,

Another French comedy I would highly recommend is "La Grande Vadrouille" with Bourvil and Louis de Funès. It dates back to the sixties or seventies and is the story of a British aircraft crew shot down by the flak; they jump with parachutes over Paris and manage to escape the Germans crossing half of France with the help of some highly comical résistants. It is really hilarious, with excellent actors as well French as British and as Germans (real Germans, not Alsatian Ersatz Germans:)). It has nothing to do with the usually stupid one-sided war films we were and sometimes still are fed with.

The producer was Gérard Oury; one of his other excellent films is "Rabbi Jacob".

PS : If you don't know "La grande vadrouille", please let me know.

[Maggie]

By the way, Daniel, you asked me a few days ago if the malgache you remembered was correct.

"tsi mich - il n'y en a pas. Is this correct or is my memory
wrong ?"

It's correct. The spelling is slightly wrong but I presume you never saw it written.

tsy misy ny vary -il n'y a pas de riz.

tsy misy ny rano - il n'y a pas d'eau

Sorry to keep you waiting, but I checked it out in the book to be sure, and then didn't get back to you.

So don't worry, your memory is still good!

[Daniel Strohl]

Maggie,

Thanks for the info. Sometimes, my memory works, as may be in the following :

In "La grande vadrouille" I recommended to Azloon, the navigator of the British bomber is a Canadian; due to the turmoil, the aircraft is more or less lost. Tbe captain of the plane asks the navigator about the position : the latter shows him a big hole (made by a Flak shrapnel) in the map and says "We are here, Sir".

Some time after, he asks again. Answer : "We are over Calais, Sir". At the same moment, there is a clearing in the clouds and everybody sees the Eiffel tower ! The captain : "Calais? - You bloody Canadian, you sh' better have staid home!"

[Gill]

I agree about La Grande Vadrouille. It is very funny even if (as in my case) your French language skills are not as good as you might wish :)

[azloon]

how could you forget it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5fsqYctXg

[Lily]

"how could you forget it?"

Azloon,

France isn't affected by PEAK OIL - just by sinking purchase power and high prices because Sarko doesn't keep his promises. ;) or :(.

(Is it this that you wanted to remind of with your link??)

[dot king]

Azloon, are you OK? your posts of late have been unfathomable :)
that link gives about a thousand possibilities of links to clips, which one do you want us to see?
Thanking you, most obliged.

[Romain]

I am quite astonished Dany Boon and his Maroilles cheese were not taken to Guantanamo for bio-terrorism. NSA is definitely not what it used to be...
P.S. Dot, I heard Jean Dujardin fired his agent, because he told him to disregard Dany Boon's proposal for the role of Khad Merad.

[Romain]

Hollywood treatment, with simplification and happy endings, but comedies often do well well. (CB)
Dis nabi so, comedy got plenty powa !
Are we condoning in pidgin English?

[dot king]

"P.S. Dot, I heard Jean Dujardin fired his agent, because he told him to disregard Dany Boon's proposal for the role of Khad Merad"
Romain

Now that I've seen the film, I can't imagine anyone in the "outsider" rôle other than Kad Merad, isn't that strange? Jean Dujardin would have been excellent I'm sure, but I can't imagine it.
and it would take away that immigrant-makes-good-in-France-against-all-odds aspect that some have dug up from the screenplay. They don't come any Frencher that Jean Dujardin, surely?

Your story is a bit like the EMI executive who turned down the Beatles!

[azloon]

Dot/Lily --

the thing i wanted to link to wasn't there when you clicked. and i posted in on the wrong string -- supposed to be bill haley and comets singing rock around the clock, theme song for blackboard jungle, which Dot mentioned on the Cannes string.

so if you thought this was unfathomable and impossible to figure out, it truly was.

Lily. God bless her, did her best to figure out what the hell i was trying to say..

when you've tried to make reference to the birth of rock 'n roll, and others believe you are trying to make a point about Peak Oil, we do indeed have a "failure to communicate."

(ok, Dot, give me this reference)

[Lily]

[Lily. God bless her, did her best to figure out what the hell i was trying to say..

when you've tried to make reference to the birth of rock 'n roll, and others believe you are trying to make a point about Peak Oil, we do indeed have a "failure to communicate."]

Azloon,

1. ROTFL

2. Figuring out what you were trying to say... - Sometimes it's easy to link ideas - you move one step to take one end and move one step back and attach it to the other end; sometimes you gotta jump and perform real stunts to do this. It's always possible to integrate one idea into another. This is an area where I DO have "know-how". ;)

BTW: Why shouldn't we debate "peak oil"?

[dot king]

Azloon, you know I'll give you a reference any day, but wha????

(I might not know the source, but I just demonstrated the concept - do I get any bonus points for that?)

[azloon]

'Cool Hand Luke,' 1967

Paul Newman

"what we have here is a failure to communicate.'

line is spoken both by the prison warden and by Newman

[dot king]

Azloon, - I would never have thought of that - I think I saw "Cool Hand Luke", but wasn't it about playing cards or something really male and boring of that nature? ; }

(I am going to try and rewatch "The Sting" which is another film that despite its world-wide success and now cult status, I found really boring - "Sundance" idem.)

[Taffy]

I'd like to step in to defend the proposed title of the American version of 'Bienvenu chez les Ch'tis'. A literal translation would be meaningless to English speakers, so the idea of calling it 'Welcome to the Sticks' is pretty clever, since 'the sticks' is not only similar in sound and appearance to 'Ch'tis' but in this context is an espression meaning a remote country area. It has nothing to do with the main meaning of 'stick' ('bâton'). Your presumably French correspondent who criticised the title has a good knowledge of English but it obviously doesn't stretch to understanding certain colloquialisms.
Taffy