20/08/2002 - Audiences from Russia to America are voting with their feet to see recent French productions like Asterix & Obelix and Sur mes lèvres

French cinema continues to perform very well throughout the world. American audiences were reminded of their love and admiration for all things Gallic on July 6 when Jacques Audiard’s latest film, Sur mes lèvres – On My Lips was released onto 33 screens. The film stars Vincent Cassel and Emmanuelle Devos and was produced by Jean-Louis Livi for Sedif and Philippe Carcassone for CineB with Pathe International handling foreign sales and such was the power of word-of-mouth at the height of the US filmgoing season that it took a reported $700,000 (circa €700,000) at the box office and is still going strong. Early last month Audiard accompanied Cassel and Devos on a promotional visit to Los Angeles that went down a storm in the national press.
Eastern Europe is another fertile terrain that’s very open to all things Gallic. In Poland, Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra went up like a rocket onto 70-odd screens, attracting 173,205 Poles during the first week on general release and shaming the season’s forecast tentpole release Spider-Man into second place! The return of Asterix and his faithful band of followers is likely to beat the excellent performance (535,000 tickets sold) of the first film of the series, Asterix and Obelix against Caesar and Amélie (700,000 tickets). Russian audiences went for Le Raid in a big way: the film attracted 370,000 people in 6 weeks and took its rightful place as one of France’s biggest-ever Russian hits.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

(Translated from French)