158,000 admissions for Crime Novel

30/03/2006

Italian feature Crime Novel by Michele Placido (see Focus) performed well its first week of release in France, attracting 158,000 spectators, or 6% of overall admissions, between March 22-28.

Distributed by Warner Bros on a respectable 221 screens, the film came in at fourth place in the weekly box office. This is all the more surprising since Placido and his cast (Kim Rossi Stuart, Anna Mouglalis, Claudio Santamaria, Pierfrancesco Favino and Stefano Accorsi) are not very well known in France, yet the actors were unanimously applauded by critics for their performances.

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Crime Novel [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michele Placido
film profile] ’s 158,000 admissions can be compared, for example, to the 169,000 spectators that Roberto Benigni’s The Tiger and The Snow [+see also:
trailer
film profile] drew during its first seven days of release on 198 French screens last December.

After a net drop in admissions of almost 25% last week, following a long upward trend as compared to 2005, The White Planet by Thierry Ragobert and Thierry Piantanida also performed surprisingly well. Distributed by Bac Films on 402 screens, the animal documentary passed the 400,000 mark in seven days, finishing in third place last week behind two American productions.

Also of note is the continuing success, after two weeks, of Pierre-François Martin-Laval’s Try Me [+see also:
trailer
film profile] with Julie Depardieu (408,000 admissions, distributed by ARP Sélection), and Philippe Le Guay’s One Fine Day [+see also:
trailer
film profile] with Benoît Poelvoorde (426,000 admissions, Mars Distribution ).

However, the winning trio for the first quarter of 2006 – Les Bronzés 3 - Amis pour la vie [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Patrice Leconte (10.26m admissions over eight weeks), Isabelle Mergault’s You Are So Beautiful [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (3.25m spectators in 77 days) and Danièle Thompson’s Orchestra Seats [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (1.85m admissions in six weeks) – continue to take in approximately 100,000 spectators each week from 1,192 screens, despite a poor per screen average.