Gaumont Disney Village

Film: Dunkirk (2017)

Screens: 15  Ticket price: 12.40€

Visits to French cinemas I haven't been to before are very rare these days, so I was pleased to squeeze in a trip to the Gaumont in Disney Village during a recent stay at Disneyland Paris.  A visit to any Disney park is always exhausting -- every day is a long one, but on one of our jam-packed days at the parks (where the illuminated castle/firework show doesn't kick off until 11pm) it turned out that we were done just in time for me to head to a late screening at the Gaumont.  I remembered the cinema from a past life and a Disneyland holiday way back in 2003 (I recall that Taxi 3 was showing at the time), which obviously predates my French cinemagoing adventures, and I always thought it would be a venue worth investigating.

The cinema's programming is downright baffling -- Disneyland is full of international visitors, yet virtually everything on offer at the cinema is in French.  On the day I visited, there was a solitary token screening in VO, and, just as with the Gaumont in Coquelles, it appears that the on-hand (and not inconsiderable) non-Francophone market isn't really on the radar of this cinema.  It may well be that they've tried offering more screenings in VOSTF but have found there are few takers -- most people don't come to Disneyland to sit in a cinema, after all, so targeting the local market (who may not go much on subbed fare) is obviously the cinema's aim.  If you've ever been to Disneyland Paris you'll be acutely aware of how money leaks from you akin to water from a broken fire hydrant, but the Gaumont's prices (again, not aimed at the non-local) are actually just about bearable (only 1.20€ more than Coquelles, which is way out in the provinces); it would be quite reasonable to assume that, as this is (i) Paris and (ii) Disneyland, then going to the cinema here would involve remortgaging your home, but not so.

I went to the IMAX (oh, with laser) screen (another 4€, thank you) which seemed like the place to be if you were going to see anything here, and the superb sound and picture could not be faulted -- Nolan's Dunkirk proving far more immersive than when I'd seen it on a standard screen in its original language (interestingly, Dunkirk would retain its place in the IMAX here even as the most expensive French film of all time -- Luc Besson's Valerian -- opened).  The cinema makes for a pleasant and straightforward filmgoing experience, and I would certainly have no problem with returning here -- especially to the IMAX screen.  The staff I encountered were all friendly and helpful, the place is clean and tidy, and, all told, it's probably the cheapest two hours or so you'll have while visiting Disneyland.

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Cinéma des cinéastes

Film: A Prairie Home Companion (2006)

Screens: 3  Ticket price: 9.50€

Now this is a cinema.  Founded by Claudes Lelouch, Miller and Berri with Jean-Jacques Beineix (the rogue whose Betty Blue was responsible for introducing that law where a quad for the film had to adorn every 80s/90s student hovel), this 3-screener, situated in Clichy and just across from the Pathé Wepler, really means it.  Don't come here unless you want to watch the film, as chatterboxes and text/facebook/twitter addicts will not be suffered at all, let alone gladly.

With an ambitious programme that annually includes a generous helping of stuff hot from Cannes, as soon as you walk in here you can sense the purposeful -- yet not at all pretentious -- atmosphere.  The auditorium we were in was quite modern and minimalist in terms of its decor, which is how I understand the other two to be.  As you'd expect, the presentation of the film was superb, and Robert Altman's hugely enjoyable swansong, retitled as the less unwieldy (and rather poignant) The Last Show for French audiences, was well-received by the impeccably-behaved audience.

I really wish I'd visited the bistro (located upstairs - you have to enter from within the cinema, but a ticket isn't needed) as I've since read several rave reviews about it.  That said, on a cold December night the crêpe stand just over the road made for an ideal post-film stop to grab an ambulatory bite to eat.  That reminds me: if by any chance you bought a pile of stuff to make crêpes with (say, on holiday last summer in Brittany), isn't it about time you used it?  If that doesn't sound like you, please ignore.

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Le Grand Rex

Film: Arthur et les Minimoys (2006)

Screens: 7  Ticket price: 13.50€/11.50€

Boasting the biggest screen in Europe and some 2800 seats from which it can be viewed, Le Grand Rex isn't just a clever name -- and it's impossible not to be impressed by the scale and grandeur of this place.  The auditorium is decked out in flamboyant, Art Deco style, and it's tempting to spend much of your time looking anywhere but the screen -- which might well be advisable if, as was the case when we once walked past, something of the calibre of Stealth is playing.  As you'd expect, it's always a big, commercial film that plays on this screen, and it's almost always in French (originally or dubbed).

Arguably the best time to go is around Christmastime, where the big seasonal film is augmented by an incredible, elaborate, pre-film water fountain display entitled the Féerie des Eaux; apparently well over 1000 water jets are used for this show, which also involves lights/lasers and music.  They seem to thematically tie in this display with the film, so when we visited there were various characters from the first Arthur film (natch) pinging around on zip wires, dangling over balconies etc.  To be honest, between that and the incredible design of the building, I felt I'd just about got my money's worth even before Freddie Highmore started trying it on with Madonna -- surely that's just wrong?  Maybe that's why they got someone his own age (Selena Gomez) in for the two sequels?

In case you're reading this and thinking that I've made all this up and you never saw any such smut when you viewed the film, let it be known that the Weinsteins hacked around 10 minutes out of the movie for the US and UK markets -- most of which concerned this love story.  The original cut, which we saw at the Rex, is freely available on French DVD, complete with the original English audio track.  Hell, I may not necessarily agree with the concept of that boy from Two Brothers making amorous overtures towards the woman behind that filthy coffee table book, but I'll merrily defend your right to see such wrongheaded fare.  Although I probably wouldn't go so far as to provide a link to some backstreet trader that might supply it.

If you do plan on going at what might be a busy time (i.e. near Christmas, weekends or evenings) then you might want to book (online, in person or over the 'phone) as you can imagine how nuts this place can get when it's approaching anything like capacity.  We were down that way (nearest métro is Bonne Nouvelle, by the way) on a Saturday and had to wade through a swarm of Arthur-daft kids to book tickets for the Monday.  Best head to the box office that's a short way along the side street just to the left of the main entrance; they also have another half-dozen smaller, cheaper screens, but who wants to go to those?

If you've made the trip there, definitely do the behind-the-scenes tour, les Étoiles du Rex, which is thankfully self-guided and takes about 45 minutes.  At one point you go in a lift that takes you up (or is it down?) behind the screen where the main film is playing, and you can look right through at the unwitting audience who appear to be watching you.  Well, I suppose if they've been on the tour they won't be unwitting, as they'll know there's a lift behind the screen that's continually, silently going up and down as they're watching a dub of Transformers 2.  Bet this knowledge drives some of them mad.

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UGC Ciné Cité Créteil

Film: La science des rêves (2006)

Screens: 12  Ticket price: 11.40€

For a couple of successive summers we’d had a late August/early September (don't dignify it by clicking) holiday in Paris, taking advantage of reasonably good value train-plus-hotel combos offered by Eurostar.  Summer 2006 saw them offer nothing but ridiculously-priced packages -- well, perhaps they did, but not when we tried to book, which was about the same time as the previous two years.  "Ah'm no giein them it" was the most-heard phrase in our house as my wife pummelled the keyboard in search of a non-existent bargain (what's up with all these people who spell it "bargin," by the way? And why does our house turn into an Irvine Welsh novel whenever we try to book a holiday?)  But we did have, hiding in plain view, a ticket remaining from a value bundle we’d bought from the now-defunct Speedferries (click here for a Speedferries-related anachronism that yours truly submitted to the IMDb page for Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), so decided to put together our own package.  Ha!

The plan was to drive down to Paris from Boulogne but stop off at a couple of places we’d often thought about but had never actually got round to: Amiens and Parc Astérix.  Neither of those places disappointed, and en route we managed to take in the very attractive Chantilly, too.  Now, you’re probably thinking that taking the car to Paris isn’t the greatest idea, and you’re right -- but we’d cunningly booked a hotel on the outskirts (Créteil), with the main criteria being that it had to have parking and was close to a métro station.  As it turned out, Créteil was the last stop on the line, but getting into the centre of town was actually pretty painless.  Once it was holed up in the hotel’s free car park, the Hyundai didn’t move until it was time to head north again.  Although I think it did nip out to get a McDonald's at some point, as I noticed some evidence under the radiator on the day we checked out.  But I let it slide.

There was a large and impressive shopping centre close to the hotel, and next to (or joined onto) it was the UGC.  The efficient if none-too-sparkly ticket seller handed me the tickets plus a couple of miserable coins in exchange for my 20€ note (it may be the ’burbs, but they still charge Parisian prices) and we then proceeded to wait behind a cordon while our auditorium was "prepared."  The Michel Gondry film -- one of my favourite movies of the past ten years -- was nicely-presented to a well-behaved audience, and all told it made for a very satisfying evening out.

Now, this is quite interesting (though probably only to me), but they screened the film in its original version, although if memory serves me right this wasn't indicated anywhere in the foyer or listings.  In all the times I've looked at this cinema's listings since, I've never known them to screen a film in anything other than French.  Maybe this was a one-time-only error that met with a barrage of complaints (although our fellow audience members didn't seem at all disgruntled), and if so was a reasonably easy one to make: Gondry is a French director; the movie was French-filmed, set and funded; it had an original title that was in French; and it prominently featured French stars Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alain Chabat, Miou-Miou and Emma de Caunes.  So perhaps they assumed (via the duck test or otherwise) that the film could only be in the French language.  But -- and here's the rub -- the film starred Mexican heartthrob Gael García Bernal, whose character used the lingua franca that is English to communicate with those around him (an arrangement that no doubt continued off-screen as well).  I'd estimate that no less than 85% of the film is in English.

So yep, that's Créteil for you.  On the basis of that truly great film I said I'd always make a point of seeking out Michel Gondry's future work (even though I didn't especially care for his earlier Eternal Sunshine) but I'm now quite understandably reconsidering that policy on the basis of The Green Hornet.  Everything has its limits.

Update: Judging by the information in the issues of L'Officiel des spectacles that I've managed to get hold of this year (2019), it now seems that films in VO are not uncommon here...

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Pathé Wepler

Nightfall in the Place de Clichy. Image: public domain

Films: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

Screens: 12  Ticket price: 13.20€

Everyone loves the Pathé chicken, don't they?  Much better than that star thing that Gaumont has as a logo.  These two big-hitters now come under the same umbrella (as the link to the website will testify), and I assumed there'd be far more Gaumonts than Pathés around.  So I was mildly surprised to learn that Gaumont only has a poultry lead over their feathered friends, with the scores currently running at 35-34.  And that's only because Gaumont broke the deadlock by opening a spanking new multiplex (aren't they all?) in the regenerated docks area of Le Havre.  I hope this slightest of edges won't lead to Pathé being squeezed out, Andrew Garfield style.  You could just imagine the fried chicken returning from a long, stressful trip, on which he'd been nominally trying to drum(stick) up some advertising revenue (probably from Société Générale) and having his carefully-selected airport gifts flame-grilled by his lady friend, only to find he's been ousted by the apathy of I-can't-believe-it's-not-Michael Cera.

If I'm right (and can operate Allocine correctly, else the above figures may also be way out) the Pathé Wepler is the only cinema that the company (meaning the cockerel half of the operation) have operating in Paris (meaning with a 75 postcode).  Gaumonts are everywhere in the capital, though -- 12 at the last count, if we take their arrangement on the Champs-Elysées to be two, which we will.  Although, if we take it to be just one, that means the overall score is tied at 34 apiece and the chicken can rest easy.  I'd still have a lawyer check it over, though.  But those numbers (if at all accurate) prove that Pathé, like Kad in that Dany Boon film, have, in the main, been assigned to the sticks -- what's the crass thinking here?  That everyone outside of Paris lives in a Bruno Dumont film where they keep livestock, and will therefore be bewitched by that (admittedly pretty damn rockin') rooster graphic? 

We visited the Wepler cinema on back-to-back days, or at least twice in three days.  The reason I know this is that they had their summer "3 days, 3 Euro" promotion on so it seemed rude not to exploit it, even if the films we saw were ones we could quite easily have caught at home (although we wouldn't have -- over the past few years, we've spent far more time as a couple going to see films on overseas holidays than we have in UK cinemas).  In cosmopolitan, not-remotely-bucolic Paris it's generally not too hard to find a film that's playing in English, and the Pathé Wepler normally has something on in this tongue.  The two films we saw (one of which starred a pre-Madge-bothering Freddie Highmore, the other that greeting-faced guy from The Office who was only ever tolerable in that show) provide good examples of how this cinema (and quite a few others in the city) tends to operate: French dubs abound for earlier screenings of the day, but from evening onwards films often revert to their original languages (with French subs, natch).

The cinema is absolutely fine -- I have no real strong feelings about it, to be honest -- and is an easy walk from Montmartre, so if you like you can pop in to the famous cemetery before or after the film and see François Truffaut's grave.  The ticket booths are on a fairly noisy corner, and once you've barked your requirements through the glass you will either be heading through the doors right next to where you've grabbed your ticket or will have to nip round the corner to another set of doors, depending on what screen you're headed for.  If your destination is the further away entrance the ticket seller will normally gesture in that direction (I've deduced this after a full 2 visits), or the worst case is that you'll try the wrong door and a member of staff will prod you towards the other entrance -- you'll make more friends than Mark Zuckerberg as you fight against the throng of people who actually know where they're going.

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[PARTLY CLOSED] Gaumont Champs-Elysées

Film: Clean (2004)

Screens: 6/7  Ticket price: 10.50/12€

A tip: if you ever arrange to meet someone at the Gaumont Champs-Elysées but you're not planning on seeing a film there, my advice is don't.  Pick another rendezvous point, such as the Disney Store or the Publicis Drugstore.  See, there are two cinemas there, both called Gaumont Champs-Elysées.  If this helps at all, the one referred to as the Marignan is on the same side as the Publicis Drugstore while the Ambassade is on the same side as the Disney Store, Fnac and Virgin Megastore (yes, they may be gone from the US and UK, but you can still get your fix in France).  But, despite having nominally different identifiers, they always seem to come under the single umbrella of Gaumont Champs-Elysées.

I suppose you could say that London's Leicester Square has two Odeon cinemas, but at least they have explicitly different names -- Odeon Leicester Square (which also houses the broom-cupboard miniplex Odeon Mezzanine -- a similar deal to Le Grand Rex, but not as good) and Odeon West End.  If you're dozy enough to say you'll meet someone by "that Odeon in Leicester Square" a bit of nomenclature confusion might await you, but at least they're much closer than these two Gaumonts that, to all intents and purposes, have the same frickin' name.  A much harsher mistress.  Between these two you'll find a very nice spread of films, with the tourist trap nature of the area meaning that films in English aren't hard to come by (although this same logic doesn't apply to the Gaumont out at Disneyland).

We visited the Ambassade on my birthday to see Olivier Assayas' Clean -- a film that starred ex-Mrs Assayas Maggie Cheung and contained a nice little appearance by Canuck combo Metric.  Assayas is an interesting director -- kind of like France's answer to Michael Winterbottom (stay with this, please) as he indulges in all manner of genre-hopping.  He's made some pretty great films (such as Clean, Carlos and Les destinées), interesting failures (Demonlover) and downright stinkers (Boarding Gate).  A lot like Winterbottom.  Plus, they have at least one actress in common (ex-Mrs Mathieu Amalric, AKA Jeanne Balibar) who worked on Clean immediately after Winterbottom's Code 46 (copy and paste into his "interesting failures" if you so fancy).

But yep, it's a very comfortable cinema and a nice place to escape the hustle and bustle of the Champs-Elysées for a couple of hours (especially when you've just overdone it on hot chocolate and cake).  It's a little bit pricey, but as it's a combination of (i) Gaumont and (ii) the Champs-Elysées, what could anyone reasonably expect?  Much better value than that Odeon in Leicester Square, anyway.  No, not the one by Chiquitos... the one, you know, by the grass square... along from The Hampshire... towards Panton Street.  But not Odeon Panton Street.  Oh, just forget it; see you at the Gaumont Champs-Elysées.

Update:  The above nomenclature confusion no longer applies as, after 57 years of service, the Ambassade side shut down at the end of July 2016.  Now's probably a good time to also mention that there's currently only one Odeon in London's Leicester Square (although Odeon West End is due to be revived in a couple of years, incorporated into a luxury hotel).  Oh, and Virgin Megastores no longer exist in France.

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Studio 28

Montmartre, dominated by the Sacré-Cœur

Films: 5x2 (2004), La moustache (2005)

Screens: 1  Ticket price: 9€

The first cinema I set foot in on French soil (unless we count non-film excursions to the UGC in Lille) still stands as one of the best.  Both times we've been there we've been staying just around the corner from the cinema on the steep Rue Tholozé, which is deep in the heart of Amélie country (indeed, part of that film was shot in the cinema's opulent interior), AKA Montmartre.

There's something very special about this one-screener.  Luis Buñuel's shockfest L'Age d'Or debuted here, as did his later Los Olvidados.  At one time Jean Cocteau was closely associated with the place and designed some of the interior features such as the light fittings, a peek at which is arguably worth the (by no means extortionate) ticket price alone -- or, you could just click on the link (that reminds me -- put your 'phone away, you ****).  There's a nice-looking bar (no food or drink allowed in the cinema, mind) and (hopefully still) a charming resident Wire Fox Terrier; we once swung by there when the cinema was shut as part of its annual closing, and as we stood outside figuring out our next move, the dog drove past and glanced at the cinema.  It's true -- he was in the left-hand seat, and I very much doubt the car was an import.

My inaugural experience of a film at a French cinema was a preview of Ozon's sweaty 5x2 -- a film that, at the time, I felt was less than the sum of its parts and actually more like 6/10 (I thank you).  But in the months that followed it really started to grow on me, for several reasons --  it does have an emotional resonance, it featured the great Michael Lonsdale, there's fine use of Sparring Partner on the soundtrack, and even that reedy sister of the first lady (who's also rent-a-deviant Louis Garrel's real-life Mrs Robinson) was pretty good in it.  Man, did she stink in that Chabrol film.  The cinema, which probably has only a couple of hundred seats, was packed and they even conducted a short pre-film quiz, which sounds really intense and geeky but was actually quite relaxed and fun.  Tuesday night previews are a staple there, and I would imagine that if I lived round those parts (as if...) I'd become one of the many who religiously turn out for them.  Films are always in their original language there -- it's a pretty hardcore place, but fun and friendly.

Since you weren't wondering, the "28" part in the name comes from the year the cinema opened, which apparently makes it the longest-running picture house in Paris.  The cinema was immortalised in a 1998 film starring Mike Myers.

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