France cinema has a low-cost blockbuster on its hands – a rugby story that could almost have been set in the Welsh valleys
If you saw a 50-year-old man running naked around the Arc de Triomphe at midnight last summer, that would have been Philippe Guillard. He was making good his promise to run a naked lap of the Parisian landmark if more than 500,000 people went to see his film about life among the rugby people of France's south-west. His assessment turned out to be too modest by half.
Since its release at the start of the year more than a million people have flocked to see Le Fils à Jo, a film which is to its sport and its region as the 1996 British film Brassed Off was to brass bands and the South Yorkshire coalfields: a comedy with soul and roots and humanity, and a deep love of its subject and its setting.
If you saw a 50-year-old man running naked around the Arc de Triomphe at midnight last summer, that would have been Philippe Guillard. He was making good his promise to run a naked lap of the Parisian landmark if more than 500,000 people went to see his film about life among the rugby people of France's south-west. His assessment turned out to be too modest by half.
Since its release at the start of the year more than a million people have flocked to see Le Fils à Jo, a film which is to its sport and its region as the 1996 British film Brassed Off was to brass bands and the South Yorkshire coalfields: a comedy with soul and roots and humanity, and a deep love of its subject and its setting.
- 10/24/2011
- by Richard Williams
- The Guardian - Film News
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