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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