Comme les autres: gay and longing to be a parent

by Fabien Lemercier

03/09/2008 - Domestic feature films are back with force today on French cinema screens with the eight releases featuring five majority productions and one minority production. Originality seems to be à la mode this week, from Japanese thriller Inju [trailer] by Barbet Schroeder, screened in competition at the Venice Film Festival (see article – UGC Distribution, 178 screens) to Pascal Laugier’s very trash Martyrs [trailer](see news), released by Wild Bunch on 69 prints.

Exploration of new themes is on the menu too, with Comme les autres [trailer] (“Like Others”), a debut feature directed by Vincent Garenq and starring Lambert Wilson, Pascal Elbé and Spanish actress Pilar López de Ayala. The film, written by the director, is a comedy about a homosexual couple and the desire to be a parent. Disagreement in the harmonious couple’s relationship sets in when one partner wants a child and the other doesn’t, resulting in one of the partners looking for a woman to carry the baby at the risk of upsetting the sentimental balance in his life.

The Nord-Ouest production is backed by the Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC) Images de la diversité funds and has been sold to a number of territories by Films Distribution. Mars Distribution will handle its release on a generous 251 screens.

Rezo Films is releasing 40 prints of Emmanuel Bourdieu’s Intrusions, starring Natacha Régnier, Denis Podalydès, Amira Casar Eric Elmosnino and Jacques Weber. The new film from the director of Poison Friends (2006 Grand Prize Cannes Critics Week) was produced by Arcapix on a €2.8m budget which included support from the Ile-de-France region, as well as pre-sales from Canal+, TPS and Ciné Cinéma.

Co-productions this week include Pyramide’s release (46 prints) of Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir’s Salt of This Sea [trailer], which premiered in the Cannes Certain Regard sidebar (produced by JBA with Switzerland’s Thelma Film, Spain’s Mediapro and Belgian outfit Tarantula). Epicentre Films is distributing 14 prints of Portuguese helmer Manoel de Oliveira’s Christopher Columbus, The Enigma [trailer], a minority French co-production directed by Les Films de l'Après-midi. José Padilha and James d'Arcy’s controversial Brazilian title Tropa de Elite, a Golden Bear winner at the Berlin Film Festival distributed by TFM, also hits French screens today.

(Translated from French)