UGC Ciné Cité Lille

Film: Le silence de Lorna (2008)

Screens: 14  Ticket price: 10.40€

A birthday trip to Lille -- a fine Flemish city -- met with rain and so the cinema seemed like a good place to park up for a couple of hours.  Any film by lugubrious Belgians the Dardenne bros. is a great leveller for any zip you might have in your zap, and Lorna proved to be no exception -- a grim tale involving the excellent Jérémie Renier as a hapless junkie involved in a sham marriage to land said Lorna an EU passport. 

The cinema itself is pretty much what you'd expect -- you might recall UGC's presence in the UK from the time when they occupied the cinemas that prior to then were owned by Virgin and have since become Cineworld, although the French UGCs are that little bit flasher.  I'd been to this city centre cinema at least a couple of times before to have a nice lunch at the café (ironically gone on the day I actually wanted to see a film there), and had even blagged my way into the cinema's toilets -- huzzah!  As you might expect given that it was a Dardenne bros. film, it was in a fairly small (yet perfunctory) auditorium for the rather large admission price.

The biggest drawback was that, despite the place being no more than 20% full (and I'm being quite generous here), it was nonetheless peopled by punters who wanted to sit right next to/behind/in front of us.  If you're reading this and recognise this trait in yourself, please stop this unsettling practice right now.  The Dardennes could make a film about it, with Jérémie Renier being ideal (if lazy) casting for an innocent who's regularly accosted to the strains of adverts for Société Générale.  While I enjoyed my visit there, I think my best memories of this place are of eating very nice toasties (no, not a croque-monsieur, which is what you're thinking -- I know what that is, thanks) in the café - and of a time when strangers didn't sidle up to me in the dark.

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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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UGC Ciné Cité Rouen

Film: Match Point (2005)

Screens: 14  Ticket price: 9.40€

The road to Rouen.  And it very nearly was, as we narrowly escaped being caught up in the notorious French riots of 2005 that took place in many cities across the country, including the capital of Upper Normandy.  Rouen is a great city that's perhaps best known as the place where Milla Jovovich was burned at the stake way back in 1431.  It's replete with nice Norman houses, souvenirs featuring cows, and apple products (no, not iPods -- think again).

One evening we were indulging in one of our not-so-favourite holiday pastimes of procrastinating over where to have dinner and wandering the streets between our hotel and the city centre (in the end we predictably went to the Quick burger joint about 5 minutes away from the hotel).  During our walk we went along one particular street where groups of young men lined the pavement.  None of them bothered us in the slightest, but they all cast their eyes over us as we walked past.  Looking back it's now fairly clear that the area we were blithely drifting through was something of a war room for the mayhem that was to occur over the next few days.  Had we realised that at the time, I doubt if we'd have been doing much walking through that area -- we'd have needed parachutes fitted to our backs to slow us down once we'd cleared it.

It's kind of sad really, as Rouen was such a nice place and we had a really good time there, but I guess we should just consider ourselves lucky -- after all, it'd all have been a lot sadder had our car been torched.  Our hotel was run by a nice woman who owned a lovely Golden Labrador who we got to know a little bit, and this smiley character happily agreed to pose with us for some pictures in the car park (sorry, friend, we lied about there being all-you-can-eat dog biscuits out there).  Hope he and his mum stayed safe once the riots began.  Anyway, oblivious to the scenes that were soon to unfold, we spent some time in the Saint-Sever shopping centre, a decent place with some nice eateries as well as the expected shops -- my wife bought a couple of tops in a small La Redoute there, and the friendly assistant seemed genuinely amazed that a couple of étrangers were in the shop, let alone purchasing something while not wishing to sign up for the catalogue (which is something of an institution in France).  We do like to mess with people.

The shopping centre also played home to the UGC, and during our stay they had a preview of Woody Allen's Match Point (original language and subbed).  Allen, like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, is revered in France and it's generally the place to go if you want an early look at his new film.  I remember the guy at the ticket counter asking if we wanted our parking validated and looking surprised when we told him we'd walked there (see, up to our usual tricks again there. Maybe he was the husband/brother of Ms. La Redoute?)  As our micro-conversation continued he said he thought we were local to Rouen -- not sure whether to believe him or not, I thought I may as well take my victories where I find them and took the compliment with a smile.  You, Sir, can sell me my ticket again, I thought (not for the same film, mind -- though it'd be easy enough to fork out twice when you've been puffed up like that.  I'm talking about a future screening that, more than five years on, still hasn't happened).

Anyway, the film was very enjoyable, the crowd appreciative and the cinema clean and comfortable.  The walk home in the dark passed without incident (insert joke about wife's temper here) and when we got back I ended up watching a midnight TV showing of Chabrol's The Cry of the Owl.  Good stuff.  Why didn't I buy it on DVD before it ended up rocketing in price?  I did buy the Paddy Considine/Julia Stiles version for £2, but I'm really not sure it'll be quite the same.

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