Gaumont Coquelles (formerly Gaumont Cité Europe)

Films: Ensemble, c'est tout (2007), Camping 2 (2010), La princesse de Montpensier (2010), Largo Winch 2 (2011), Les Lyonnais (2011), Astérix et Obélix: Au service de Sa Majesté (2012), Populaire (2012), Gibraltar (2013), La belle et la bête (2014), En équilibre (2015), Finding Dory (2016), Brice 3 (2016), Demain tout commence (2016), Jour J (2017), Cherchez la femme (2017), The Jungle Bunch (2017), Dilili in Paris (2018), The Emperor of Paris (2018), La vérité si je mens! Les débuts (2019), Hors normes (2019), Le prince oublié (2020), 10 jours sans maman (2020)

Screens: 12  Ticket price: 10.90€

Yeah, OK, I've been to Gaumont cinemas, which I'm guessing leads you to think of me as being a bit like those people who spend their lives moaning about Tesco yet you almost never catch them buying milk from their corner shop (or if they do, they then complain that it costs more than in the supermarket).  And yep, I've lined The Man's pocket.  I really don't know what to tell you.
The Gaumont at Cité Europe is a huge aircraft hangar-type building that's right next to the restaurant end of the mall (in which there's a remote ticket machine -- which actually works, unlike those ones at Bluewater your mileage may vary) and a very short walk across the grass (but don't do this at the Eiffel Tower, kids) from a cluster of hotels (Ibis, Etap etc.).

With 3 times as many screens as the nearby Alhambra and films that are always in French (more on that later), it's the warehouse of choice for the yoof of Calais and its environs.  A huge foyer has several ticket desks, plenty of food/drink options, and a few handy queue-busting ticket machines, which not only save a bit of time (and it's usually pretty busy at peak hours -- when I went to see Largo Winch 2 I had to wait more than 15 minutes just for one of these machines) but are attractive to misanthropic types like myself who usually can't be bothered dealing with people.  Oh, and if that sounds like you, there's also a Coke machine on the other side of the ticket-tearer.  But really, your bag/pockets/hat/dog's neckerchief should be obscenely stuffed with all types of continental contraband from the nearby Carrefour hypermarket -- at these ticket prices, you've given Gaumont enough of your hard-earned.  Although, come to think of it, Carrefour are also The Man.

The auditoriums themselves are quite good.  Every time I've been there I've had a fairly enjoyable time, but on each occasion there's been a clearly audible burble of conversation rippling around the cinema, which really grinds my gears; for Largo Winch 2 I wearily moved to the other side of the auditorium to elude a gaggle of noisy latecomers.  The first trip there featured some girls stage whispering throughout the film, and provided me with the sad realisation that France wasn't impervious to inconsiderate cinemagoing types.  The film on that occasion was Ensemble, c'est tout -- a serviceable but curiously low-key affair with good-looking Audrey Tautou entering into predictably complicated romantic shenanigans with good-looking Guillaume Canet.  It's billed as being a Claude Berri (RIP) film, although while watching it I really wasn't sure as to how much of it he'd actually directed.  Sure enough, scrutiny of the credits revealed that François Dupeyron (The Officer's Ward) was given a shifty-sounding "technical advisor" credit, and it indeed turned out that Dupeyron had taken over from the ailing Berri.  Finely-tuned auteur radar or what?  I think Berri's final film -- canine caper Trésor -- actually gave Dupeyron a proper co-director credit.

On another occasion, my wife and I made an unscheduled visit there.  This was on a Saturday day trip where we'd gone over for a bit of shopping, walk along the seafront, cone of coffee, cup of chips, etc.  However, on arriving in Calais we noticed there was no-one around, and no shops open (although the latter is not at all unusual for lunchtime there).  We soon twigged it was a public holiday, and if you've never experienced a public holiday in France then you haven't experienced one at all.  Everything is closed, and there's nary a soul on the streets.  It makes those early scenes in 28 Days Later look like New Year in Times Square.  We felt kind of silly, but at least a couple of friends from home we'd arranged to meet had made the same mistake.  So more like We Are Legend.  Cue a screeching of tyres as we all headed out of town in search of wine stores, clutch and exhaust fitters, shoe shops, builders' merchants... basically anywhere we could fumble with our Euros and be involved in transactions.

We decided to head for Cité Europe where we caught Camping 2 -- we hadn't seen the first one, but somehow it didn't look as if that was going to be too critical.  Plus, it re-teamed the star and director of the great Disco, so that was a good start.  The cinema was mobbed, and I realised that this must be where those who weren't enduring visits from relatives (and perhaps some who were supposed to be -- naughty, naughty) must be taking shelter.  The film was good, ridiculous fun with Franck Dubosc (there's one for Corrie fans -- Mum???) on fine clown prince form.  Afterwards we had a meal at the nearby 3 Brewers (despite the shops at Cité Europe being shut, most/all of the restaurants by the cinema were open), and from a day that could so easily have been a write-off we had managed to fashion a fun time.  Although we've often been to Cité Europe, it's usually on a busy day trip where either a film or a proper sit-down meal is hard to fit in, let alone both.

One thing I really don't get about this place is that, despite it being just a few metres from the channel tunnel and therefore the closest French cinema to the UK, they only ever show films in French.  In all the years I've known about this place I've only ever been aware of one film that screened in something other than French (a preview of Ray).  Haven't they noticed that the mall next door is teeming with British day-trippers?  They have 12 screens FFS -- why not ghettoise one of them into a place where English language films can play with French subs?  They could even organise post-screening pitched battles between the locals and Les Rosbifs. I'm guessing they know more about it than I do and have done their homework on this (and may even have tried it out -- the screenings, not the pitched battles -- and found it not to be worthwhile), but I'm sure that as you're reading this there's many a poor soul reluctantly schlepping round Cité Europe with their other half, consequently annoying said other half, while the schlepper would much prefer to be parked up in the cinema for a couple of hours thus leaving the shopper to carry on unencumbered.  It really does seem like a missed opportunity.  If The Man is reading this (through Google Translate or whatever), have a good long think about this.  I know you like money.  Hell, I'll even help program it for you -- for the right fee, of course.  I know you're good for it.

Update:  As of 3/13, the cinema has now been given a major makeover; when I was last there it was in the midst of its redesign, with the large foyer representing a building site.  The local paper ran a page on the new-look cinema, with the manageress waxing lyrical and patrons mouthing off for and against the revamp.  I'll have to sit on the fence on this one until I can sample it for myself... 

Update:  And now I have, folks!  Not sure if they've done anything to the actual screens, but it was indeed a very comfortable seat which I took for Gibraltar (on its opening night, it was the only French film showing there).  A very solid thriller, but I doubt if stars Gilles Lellouche and Tahar Rahim would be too impressed with a mere six of us taking in the first main evening performance.  The foyer now seems to have switched over to the Vista ticketing system, but I had no real need to investigate as I'd booked online to get my smartphone ticket and, far more importantly, a saving of 3.70€ as part of some promotion.

Update:  So as to avoid rewriting/deleting all the nonsense towards the end of the initial post, let it be said that it's now not unheard of for films in their original language (w/ French subs) to pop up here -- usually such films get one show a day in VO, with the rest of the screenings hosting the expected dubbed version.  I first noticed this with Star Wars: The Force Awakens in late 2015.  While such screenings are still very much in the minority, it's nonetheless encouraging to see...

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[CLOSED] Le Familia (Berck)

Calvaire des marins, Berck

Films: Un long dimanche de fiançailles (2004), Les bronzés 3 (2006), Basic Instinct 2 (2006), Le deuxième souffle (2007), Les petits mouchoirs (2010), Arthur et la guerre des deux mondes (2010)

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.

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