The Kid With a Bike rolls on after Cannes

by Fabien Lemercier

03/06/2011 - Making the most of their exposure at the 64th Cannes Film Festival, several films are currently doing well at the French box office.

Among them is Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s The Kid With a Bike [trailer, film focus], which has garnered almost 210,000 admissions in two weeks on release. Winner of the Grand Prize on the Croisette, the film was launched on May 18 by Diaphana Distribution on 172 screens. It had its print-run increased to 215 in its second week and is showing impressive staying power as the number of viewers dropped by only 15% between the two weeks.

To recap on the scores achieved in France by the Dardenne brothers’ previous films, The Silence of Lorna [trailer, film focus] amassed 331,000 admissions in 2008, The Child [trailer, film focus] clocked in at 357,000 in 2005, The Son [trailer] at 240,000 in 2002 and Rosetta at 686,000 in 1999.

Others films reaping the benefits of the Cannes effect include Woody Allen’s Spanish co-production Midnight In Paris [trailer] (see review – 1.07m admissions in three weeks on a 484-print run through Mars Distribution); French director Xavier Durringer’s The Conquest [trailer] (see review – 427 000 viewers in two weeks – Gaumont on 371 screens); US helmer Terrence Malick’s Palme d’Or-winner The Tree of Life (450,000 admissions in 15 days and a drop of only 2% in the last week – EuropaCorp Distribution on 348 screens); and US blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which is cruising along at 2.6m admissions in two weeks (Walt Disney on a 726-print run).

(Translated from French)