30/09/2009

Hitting French theatres today on a huge print-run is Laurent Tirard’s French/Belgian comedy Le Petit Nicolas [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (“Little Nicolas”), adapted from the work of René Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempé.

Starring young actor Maxime Godard, Valérie Lemercier, Kad Merad, Sandrine Kimberlain and François-Xavier Demaison, this is the director’s third feature after The Story of My Life (2004) and Molière [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2007). It is being launched on 571 screens by Wild Bunch Distribution.

Co-written by the director and Grégoire Vigneron (Alain Chabat also contributed to the dialogues), the film is loosely adapted from the five comic books tracing the misadventures of a nine-year-old boy in 1950s France.

A happy little boy, Nicolas overhears a conversation between his parents, which leads him to believe that his mother is pregnant. He imagines the worst: a little brother who takes up so much space that his parents abandon him.

Along with his friends, Nicolas thus devises all sorts of plans to get rid of the baby.

"Le Petit Nicolas took me back to my own childhood (…) Everyone can identify with this combination of irony and poetry" explained Tirard. "The little child looking for his place in society became the central theme on which to build the whole story (…)”

“I looked closely at how different filmmakers told stories from a child’s perspective – including Spielberg, but also War of the Buttons and The 400 Blows", said the director, who also cites Jacques Tati’s My Uncle as one of his film references.

Le Petit Nicolas was produced by Marc Missonnier and Olivier Delbosc for Fidélité Films for €22.7m. The budget included co-production support from M6 Films, Wild Bunch, IMAV, Mandarin Films and Belgium’s Scope Pictures, as well as backing from Orange Cinéma Séries and Wallimage.

Four other French releases also hit screens this Wednesday. Metropolitan Filmexport is launching Claude and Nathan Miller’s I’m Glad that My Mother Is Alive [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (see video interview), which was unveiled in the latest Venice Days (see review); while Shellac is releasing a 35-print run of Sarah Leonor’s A Real Life [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (see news), presented in competition at Locarno and starring Guillaume Depardieu.

Mars Distribution is hoping for success with its 50-print run of Alain Tasma’s Ultimatum [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (see news), starring Gaspard Ulliel and Italian actress Jasmine Trinca.

Meanwhile, Ciné Classic is releasing a 32-print run of the documentary La Vida Loca [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (“The Crazy Life”) by Christian Poveda (who was murdered on September 2, 2009 in El Salvador).

The line-up also includes six US productions, alongside Leïla Kilani’s Moroccan/French documentary Our Forbidden Places and Korean film Thirst, winner of the Jury Prize at the latest Cannes Film Festival (distributed by Wild Side Films and Le Pacte).

(Translated from French)