Last night I went to see a film at the Alliance Fran̤aise French Film Festival. The film, The Trouble with You/ En Libert̩ was fine Рit was a typically Gallic comedy/ thriller/ romance involving a corrupt cop, wrongful imprisonment, comedic crime capers, and slightly ditzy women who enjoy being subjugated.
The problems I had were not with the film itself, but with the audience and the screening experience. As a member of the Church of Wittertainment, I am a dedicated follower of the Code of Conduct with its strict guidelines on cinema-going etiquette (turn off all mobile phones; turn up on time; don’t talk during the film; do not eat or drink anything audible – soft rolls alone are permitted as nourishment etc.). These are broken way more often than I would like, but at this particular screening, the rules were broken more than they were observed.
To begin with, the lights were not extinguished until about 20 minutes into the film. I suspect the person in charge (I realise the days of projectionists are long gone, and now the head mech merely presses a button on a desk) forgot to run the trailer reel, as the film also finished about twenty minutes before the running time on the ticket. I could have gone and asked someone to dim the lights in the auditorium, but I would have had to find someone and, as there was a function going on in the cinema foyer, this would probably have proved difficult, and I would have missed a good ten minutes of the film.
Secondly, there was a lot of implied sex and violence in the film. Now, I appreciate that it was cartoon violence (indeed the title credits appear as ‘zap! kapow! comic-book graphics’), but people get shot, stabbed and punched; ears are bitten off; deep gashes are stitched back together; robberies are committed with gigantic sex toys and scenes are set in S&M brothels. There is also a mild-manner serial killer who keeps bringing bags of dismembered body parts into the police station only to be ignored by the love-struck inspector. Unsurprisingly, this is billed as a certified M film.
The M certification in Australia is defined as ‘not recommended for children under 15 years’. Two young girls (about six years old I’d guess) were running about in front of the screen. Their parents fed them huge buckets of exceptionally noisy popcorn and left them to it. At the end of the film one child commented, ‘I closed my eyes and covered my ears for some bits of it.’ Their parent laughed.
Indeed, there was a lot of laughter throughout the film – huge, raucous, bellyaching guffaws. It was a mildly amusing film, which would have just about passed the six laughs test, but it certainly didn’t justify this level of merriment and ribaldry. I had to wonder whether this excessive laughter at things that weren’t especially funny was an example of people attempting to prove that they are cosmopolitan because they can be amused by a film in French.
There was a lot of movement throughout the film, with people constantly coming and going, waving to each other, bringing in huge platters of cheese and cold meats, talking and refilling glasses throughout the entire session. I wondered whether the audience would behave this way if the film were in English. Did they not expect people to want to hear the words because it was in a foreign language? Or was it because the lights remained up for so long that it gave them the feeling that they were at a drive-through?
To be fair, when I lived in France and saw V.O. English films, I experienced similar lack of respect and breaking of the code. I could not hear the words and so had to read the French subtitles to understand what was being said in an English film. This intrigues me as being the reverse of people behaving badly abroad; are they are behaving badly in their own country because they are being presenting with an alternative cultural experience at home? Does a foreign language relive repression and encourage people to open up to more libertine behaviour? Or was this particular audience just in a state of advanced refreshment?
