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| Calvaire des marins, Berck |
Screens: 1 Ticket price: 6.50€
Now, this might just be my favourite cinema. And I don't mean only in France. It's hard to think exactly which, out of the countless cinemas I've been to, would figure in my top three, but this place is the usually the first one to spring to mind when I'm mulling over such things, so I guess it's fairly safe to place this among my all-time faves. What about other contenders? I can think of another two in France (Studio 28, the Alhambra), the Cameo in Edinburgh, London's Curzon Soho and Cine Lumière, and the long-gone ABC in Kirkcaldy, a place I hold a great deal of affection for as I look back at the 1970s version of myself whose life was changed forever after seeing Star Wars there (six years on I returned to the same venue to twice witness the cycle come to an end with Jedi. Bliss). I frequented that cinema for much of my misspent youth, taking in everything from Ghostbusters and Rambo to slightly less successful (yet probably more enjoyable) fare such as Krull and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. I'm sure one of my last visits to the ABC was to see the excellent Star Trek: First Contact, though I think that terrible Bond film with Teri Hatcher may have been the final screening I caught there.
And of course, there's the similarly defunct Cinéma Tops in Laval -- a place where, for $20 (inc. tax -- no mean feat in Canada), you were able to grab 2 tickets for a film, 2 bottles of pop, a large bag of sweets (such as Peanut Smarties -- that was a new one to me), more popcorn than you could possibly eat, plus as much of that great Canadian powdery stuff you sprinkle on your popcorn (cinnamon? Ketchup? Dill pickle? The Tops might have had 'em all) as you might care to splutter on. Forget those relatively weedy sachets they give you in some Canuck cinemas -- at the Tops they had these industrial steel canisters that you placed your popcorn under and operated a lever that presumably grated some of the mysterious, unseen block into angel dust. It was easy to get sidetracked and forget you'd gone there for a film. I'll miss that place.
But back to Le Familia. While I really like cinemas such as the aforementioned Cameo and Curzon Soho, some places just strike a chord for reasons that it's hard to put your finger on. For me, I think the atmosphere of a place is everything, which is why my top 3 (in no particular order) would have to be the Tops, the Kirkcaldy ABC and Le Familia. No one of these places would count as the flashiest cinema the world has ever seen, but they all mean something to me that no end of 3D digital presentations and character-themed fun drinks toppers featuring Teardrop from Winter's Bone can dispel.
Berck, like its cinema, is somewhere I consider to be very special -- superb wide beaches, celebrity seals and a nice lighthouse are just three of the reasons why I like it so much. There's also a great museum and some nice places to eat (the latter a bit of a given in France. And the former, really). It is known for being the place where locked-in Elle editor Jean-Do Bauby miraculously wrote (via one eyelid) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the film of which (a stone cold masterpiece) was thankfully filmed in the town as opposed to some sound stage in a Paris 'burb. The Empress Eugenie-inaugurated Maritime Hospital, where Bauby was resident, is an incredible building to behold -- eerie, atmospheric and melancholy. See if you can wander around there without hearing the ghostly strains of La Mer in your head (no, not the Nine Inch Nails song). I understand that it (or at least the ground it stands on) is sadly going to be developed into apartments. Go take a look before it's too late -- if you walk round the back you can clearly see the balconies on which some of the movie's scenes were filmed.
Unfortunately, we never saw Diving Bell in Berck, but our first visit to the town coincided with the release of Audrey Tautou and J-P Jeunet's Amélie follow-up Un long dimanche de fiançailles. I was very impressed with the film, although it was no Amélie -- and I'm sure that Jeunet deliberately went out to fashion something that wasn't in the same vein (although it looked the same -- all Jeunet films do -- and cast the same lead actress, so perhaps he wasn't trying too hard to ward off comparisons). It's pretty long and demanding, but the crowd sat there rapt, and at any point throughout the screening you could have heard a pin drop (well, apart from during those magnificent trench scenes --at which point I've no doubt the phantom pin-dropper of Berck was merrily doing his thing).
We've always had a good time at Le Familia -- it's a friendly, welcoming place that we always go to when in Berck, pretty much regardless of what they're showing. It's that kind of place. Even complete tat like Basic Instinct 2 is perfectly palatable there. It also made for the ideal venue to catch the final part of Besson's Arthur trilogy after the disastrous experience of seeing the second film in Boulogne. The cinema is a one-screener with only a couple of hundred seats; the building looks a bit like an old church hall, and there's a car park to the side for your sand yacht. We've never actually driven there, as the ten-minute walk from the hotel is always quite nice -- invariably in the dark, we've wandered through streets of cosy, shuttered houses and identified which of them we'd like for ourselves. Hypothetically. And through the proper channels, obviously -- not in some sinister, lawless, Manson family-style way.
They only seem to open up a few minutes before (or after) the programme's due to start, so it's quite common to see people who weren't clever enough to drive there (even after multiple visits -- the dorks) milling around in the cold. The staff are always friendly, the tickets good value (they've gone up by a grand total of 50 cents in all the years we've been going there), and the audiences very civilised; I guess it's not the biggest town, so people feel accountable. The only snacks available come from a machine (if it's still there), so you can fumble with your coins and extract something lip-smackingly good such as Haribo Strawberries or, better still, Trolli Sour Glowworms.
Update: Le Familia closed its doors in early 2014; a new 3-screener -- Cinéma cinos -- has since opened in the town.
Website (for Cinéma cinos)
