[CLOSED] L'Eden

There's something rotten in the city of Havre -- at least, there seems to be if you've followed the shenanigans surrounding the closure of two of its cinemas, both of which were shut down within a year or so of each other (you can read about Les Clubs' misfortunes here).  All of this occurred at the beginning of this decade, a period in which I was no stranger to Le Havre yet, to my regret, I never made it to a screening at L'Eden -- although I did visit the striking Volcan building which housed the cinema.  The Volcan is the home of France's very first maison de la culture, which opened in 1961 at what is now the excellent Museé Malraux, before moving on to the Volcan via the Théâtre de l'Hôtel Ville.

Museé Malraux

The maison's first site was where Jacques Rivette's legendary Out 1 enjoyed its first public screening, and it's only right that the museum now carries the name of the man who, in launching the maison de la culture initiative, helped make the French arts scene a lot less Paris-centric.  André Malraux was appointed France's first Minister of Cultural Affairs by Charles de Gaulle, and in 1962 both men survived assassination attempts.  The attempt on Malraux's life -- which nonetheless had dreadful consequences in that it resulted in the blinding of a four-year-old girl -- was carried out by the OAS, a right-wing organisation vehemently opposed to Algerian independence; in 1963, Malraux's future son-in-law Alain Resnais would make the staggering Muriel, a film heavily informed by the Algerian War.

The Volcan's temporary home: la Gare du Havre-Maritime

But I digress.  The Volcan opened in 1982, with the cinema operating right from the off until January 2010, when it "temporarily" closed for renovations which were set for the following year.  Promptly after this closure, the cinema was told that the keys needed to be returned for good; apparently the fermeture was actually definitive (although the building actually did undergo a makeover, during which the Volcan set up a temporary home at one of Havre's old train stations).  The reason given by the suits for the sudden winding up of L'Eden was -- wait for it -- that three security agents (!) would be required to watch over each screening.  Unless they were planning to screen nothing other than workprints from the likes of Scorsese and Tarantino, why on earth would such security measures be needed?  There's something very, very wrong about all of this -- the justification for L'Eden's closure seems not only completely implausible, but ill-thought-out; an Allociné interview with the cinema's ex-directrice Ginette Dislaire makes for a most interesting read.  Oh, I almost forgot to mention: a shiny new 12-screen Gaumont had opened in the city just a few months prior to the curtain coming down on L'Eden.

Website (for Le Volcan)

[CLOSED] Les Clubs

Le Havre, September 2019. Image: Martin Falbisoner [license: CC BY-SA 4.0] 

Films: La fille de Monaco (2008), Antichrist (2009), Demain dès l'aube (2009)

Screens: 7  Ticket price: 7.50€

I really like Le Havre, a city that, despite being almost completely razed in the war, sprang back to life thanks in no small part to the genius that was concrete-loving architect Auguste Perret.  It also hosted the first screening of Jacques Rivette's legendary 773-minute Out 1 way back in 1971, and the equally important Disco was filmed in the city (some interesting pics/info on that here).
Situated on the leafy Avenue Foch, Les Clubs is a very pleasant cinema that, as is often the case in France, surprises you when you learn that the rather modest-looking building houses quite a few screens (7 in this instance).  In the 3 times I've been there, 2 of these have seen Les Clubs serve as an ideal place to relax/dry off before the ferry home.

The other visit was not especially relaxing as it was to see Lars Von Trier's Antichrist, a film I was keen to see (and quite keyed up for) but by the ending felt largely indifferent about.  I really didn't want to squirm through it with my wife in attendance, so she decided to pootle around the shops while I took in a load of old crap about "gynocide" and suchlike.  There were only about 4 other people in there, all on their own (surprise!) -- including the slowest latecomer ever, who took one step every 30 seconds (seriously) as he made his way towards a close-up of what he no doubt feverishly believed to be Charlotte Gainsbourg's bits (sorry mate, it was body double "Mandy Starship").  I mean, if you come in late do you have to go all the way to the front?  Sit at the back!  No, hang on, that's where I was sitting.  Another guy was already sitting in my row (I was there first, so I think I'm entitled to call it mine, no?) albeit some way along from me -- which still didn't stop me from glancing over to make sure he wasn't in possession of a strategically-placed Le Figaro.

But the film really was a load of nonsense, wasn't it?  I only winced once (at the rusty scissors scene), although on the upside the inspired use of that Handel music left it lodged in my head for days (or at least until I went to see Johnny Hallyday a few hours later -- now, why wasn't the superb Vengeance playing at Les Clubs that day? It was on general release at that time).  Although, I must be honest and say I did think about the film in the days that followed, and even picked up the BD when it fell to something resembling a respectable price, so perhaps one day I'll give it another whirl.  The overriding feeling I got from it was that it was made by a truly unhappy person (cf. Pasolini's Salo).

But we can't blame Von Trier's folly on Les Clubs, which is a fine cinema and in a great location -- close to the city centre and town hall, a Perret-designed marvel which possesses some very nice gardens where you can hang out and enjoy a pre/post-film sandwich (or possibly an Antichrist tie-in Happy Meal).

Update: Sadly, this cinema closed its doors for the last time in 2011; Havre's cinemagoers have been further impoverished by the closure of L'Eden, the cinema inside the impressive Volcan building.  In a no-way-related move, a shiny new 12-screen Gaumont has popped up in the newly-regenerated Vauban Docks.

Update: Vive Les Clubs!  Well, kind of... the Sirius, another of Havre's cinemas, closed down in spring 2012 so that the building could be torn down and a new one assembled; this new setup is due to open in autumn 2013.  In the interim, the Sirius are occupying Les Clubs' old building at 99 Avenue Foch, using 4 of the 7 screens (apparently the 4 they're using have had some additional seating installed, while the other 3 screens are on a level of the building that's been condemned by the city of Le Havre).  I was initially quite pleased to hear of this development, as it meant I may once again manage to see a film in that building.  Although -- and I may have got this wrong -- it seems that Les Clubs was quite badly treated by the city of Le Havre, who bought the building in 2006 with the remit being that it would serve as a commercial cinema in the town before the Gaumont opened, and would thereafter become an arthouse cinema. However, somewhere along the line some murky-sounding study was commissioned which concluded that it was best to demolish and rebuild the Sirius, presumably so that this could meet the city's arthouse needs and Les Clubs could basically rot to the point of being condemned (hang on a minute... didn't that kind of happen?  And remind me who it was who partially condemned it?)  All of which makes it bitterly ironic that the Sirius is now currently holed up in there -- dead man's shoes, or what?  It also seems that spurious claims for rent by the city made the winding up of the cinema a necessity.  Hmmm.  Maybe I should opt for Le Studio next time I'm in town?

Update: I've just checked (late May 2016) and the Sirius still seems to be at 99 Avenue Foch, so the move seems a bit more than temporary...

Update: I've checked again (November 2019) and the Sirius no longer seems to be based at Avenue Foch, and is now in Rue du Guesclin.  The Avenue Foch building now appears to be boarded up and uninhabited.

Website

Website [for temporary(?) Sirius]

Henri Jeanson

A painter at the port of Honfleur

Film: L'invité (2007)

Screens: 1  Ticket price: 6€

Situated on the Seine estuary and just along from Le Havre (see above post), Honfleur is a gorgeous little town that you must drop into if you're ever in Normandy.  Close to those über-swanky twins Deauville and Trouville and nowadays linked to Le Havre courtesy of the striking Pont de Normandie, Honfleur has long been a painter's delight, with a quality of light pretty much unlike anything I've ever seen.

Although it has a harbour, since its port -- and that of nearby Harfleur -- silted up, all the heavy stuff now comes in and out of Le Havre, and it's now just little boats & yachts that now drift in and out of Honfleur.  Despite being fairly small, Honfleur is a busy place and is quite well off for amenities, and (as the existence of this post proves) has its own cinema -- presumably from the days before Le Havre was so accessible, as it's hard to imagine anyone bothering to set one up with Havre just over the bridge.

Cinema Henri Jeanson (named after the editor of satirical newspaper le Canard enchaîné/writer of Jean Gabin classic Pépé le Moko, who died just along the road) is a predictably small one-screener close to the town centre.  There's really nothing too remarkable about it - you buy your ticket from a small hatch on the right just inside of the main entrance (the lobby's so small that a queue of just a few people will see a tail hanging out onto the street), and if you haven't smuggled in some chocolate-covered marshmallow bears/Haribo/ferry-purchased Toblerone there are a few sweets (i.e. tubes of Mentos) for purchase at the ticket counter.  The auditorium itself is fine, and the light comedy with Daniel Auteuil and Valerie Lemercier (both always very watchable) was ideal Saturday night fodder and included a really great joke involving a fish.

The Henri Jeanson makes for a pretty cheap trip to the movies, and if I lived in Honfleur it would be handy for whenever I couldn't be bothered to drive over to Le Havre (which, come to think of it, would probably be fairly often) -- although those who want serious choice should really head over the bridge to the big smoke.  But they seem to be quite inventive with their programming, as any successful one-screen joint needs to be.  

Website

Les Stars

Films: The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006), Le renard et l'enfant (2007), Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (2008), Disco (2008), Arthur et la vengeance de Maltazard (2009), Avatar (2009), Le concert (2009), De rouille et d'os (2012), Möbius (2013), Les beaux jours (2013)

Screens: 7  Ticket price: 8€

Although it's a French cinema I've visited the most often, the Stars definitely isn't my favourite.  Essentially, it's not a bad cinema which, for some unfathomable reason, names its auditoriums after signs of the zodiac (ah! it's the "stars" link, yes?) and always has a nice range of films showing (often including a film that's not in French, so points for that).  I've had some really great experiences there, but also some average ones and a solitary wretched, miserable visit.

Assuming you're the half-empty type, let's start with that: Arthur 2 had just been released (a full three years after the first entry), so we decided it would be a good film to catch before Christmas -- albeit in somewhere a bit less palatial than the Grand Rex.  So, we're about 20 mins or so into Luc Besson's latest eye-popping adventure when a fifty-something couple come in with what is presumably their grandkids.  The kids are alright (or all right -- depending on whether you favour the Who song or the Julianne Moore film) but, in an uncanny parallel with the Oscar-nominated movie, it's the adults who are messed up; they continue to talk loudly for the rest of the film and Granddad gets up every 10 minutes to nip out for a smoke, letting the fire door bang loudly.

So, the experience was completely killed as far as I was concerned, and any illusions I had about France being the last bastion of the serious (or at least civilised) cinemagoer were shattered.  I wouldn't have blamed any right-thinking person in the cinema if they'd gone home and downloaded a snide copy of the film from the interweb -- they'd bought their ticket, after all, helping the film's box office totals, and were thus entitled to view and enjoy the film.  It's pretty hard to sell a cinema "experience" like this (which are pretty commonplace in the UK) -- they actually serve as fantastic adverts for piracy.  For the record, like a good soldier I bought Arthur 2 on BD and enjoyed the 80% of it I'd previously missed, but the Stars debacle remains vividly in memory as one of those sour experiences where you're going to be royally screwed whatever you do -- put up with it (as I did) and the film's ruined; get into an argument over it and the film's still ruined; even if you go out to get a member of staff (who really won't want to deal with it), you'll miss some of the film -- which, paradoxically, you're unable to enjoy anyway.

And from the ridiculous to the sublime: Dany Boon's phenomenonally successful Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (the most successful French film ever at the domestic box office) is one of our favourite films of recent years.  Like Chris Nolan's Inception, it's that rare beast: a blockbuster that genuinely deserves its success.  Watching it in the Stars has to go down as one of my favourite cinema experiences ever.  Although Boulogne isn't at the heart of Ch'ti country it is nonetheless in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais and close enough to the parts where people ceaselessly bark hein!  Stories about the film's runaway success were common in the local media, and I recall the region's paper La Voix du Nord running some pretty excitable articles about it.  Besides the film being a ton of fun, what made the screening so special was the simple act of seeing the film in the region in which it was set; there was a constant ripple of excitement/recognition in the auditorium -- nothing too intrusive, but you could see people smile and nudge their neighbour when they spotted that street where their brother-in-law used to work, or the roundabout where they lost their hubcap.  There was something very inclusive about it all -- it didn't matter that we weren't from there, all that seemed to matter was that we were there.  Good times.

There have been other notable trips to the Stars, such as watching a 9pm (and therefore very quiet) screening of Luc Jacquet's excellent Le renard et l'enfant -- for my money better than his much-lauded penguin film, although the foxy tale does contain some pretty upsetting scenes for adults -- and kids.  Plus, the original cut includes a closing scene that was lopped off of the Kate Winslet-narrated version that eventually opened in the Anglophone world, so the completist in me enjoyed that aspect.  The Le Havre-set Disco was also another fine film we caught there, although I would have dearly loved to have seen it in Havre to see if something similar to the Ch'ti effect was in place.  Disco was very unlucky in some ways, as although it was a sizeable hit its release date meant it was somewhat eclipsed by the Ch'ti film, although I'm guessing it did a nice sideline in picking up those who couldn't get in to see Dany Boon's comedy.

I was also present on the inaugural day of the cinema's 3D system, which appropriately enough was for James Cameron's word-of-mouth, minor arthouse success Avatar.  The proud manager (I think) even came out to chat to the bespectacled masses before the film began.  Not sure whatever happened to that film -- maybe someone could start a petition to get it released on DVD?

Website

Update: For quite some time the cinema has been under new ownership, having been bought by the Megarama chain.  Megarama are currently constructing a 14-screener in Boulogne, so I imagine the Stars will close once this new cinema is completed.  The new Megarama was due to open in time for Christmas 2019, but an Easter 2020 opening now looks much more likely.  So you should still have a few months (from 11/19) if you'd like to get along to the current cinema...

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.

Website