Oslo August 31st set to break box-office record for a Norwegian film in France

Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s Oslo August 31st, which premiered in Cannes Un Certain Regard last year, is proving an unexpected art-house hit in France, where it was released last week.

Trier’s drama, following a recovering drug addict as he visits the locations of his past in his home city of Oslo, racked up 30,286 admissions on 38 prints in its opening weekend.

Its screen average of 797 entries per copy was the second highest for the period after Oscar-winning Jean Dujardin and Gilles Lellouche’s exploration of male infidelity The Players.  Oslo’s screen average for Paris was 2,150 entries.

French distributor Memento Films Distribution is expanding Oslo’s release by another 15 copies for its second week in theatres, beginning today (March 7) – from seven to 11 screens in Paris and 31 to 42 in the provinces for a total of 53 copies.

“It’s rare to expand a film of this type in its second week.  We weren’t really expecting this… it’s a pretty dark story and the director’s first picture [Reprise] didn’t raise too much attention here,” says Memento Films Distribution chief Alexandre Mallet-Guy.

The film, which is sold internationally by The Match Factory, also opened in the United States (Strand Releasing), the UK (Soda Pictures), Switzerland (Look Now) and Benelux (ABC Distribution) last week.

On its currently trajectory, Oslo looks set to overtake the 2003 comedy Kitchen Stories as the most successful Norwegian release in France to date.

That picture, released by Les Films du Losange, clocked up 75,000 entries, after achieving 15,000 entries on 49 prints in its opening weekend.

Oslo is based loosely on French writer Pierre Drieu’s 1931 novel Le Feu Follet (Will O’ the Wisp), which was previously adapted to the big screen by Louis Malle in 1963.

But Mallet-Guy thinks this has had little bearing on the film’s success in France. He instead points to good reviews from the local film press as well as a dearth of art-house releases amid the half-term holiday period spanning February and March as well as the lead-up to the Césars and Oscars.

“Over the school holiday period the theatres are crowded out with children’s films and comedies. There’s not much space for art-house titles. On top of this, I think distributors were reluctant to release independent films in the week after the Césars and Oscars,” he explains.

Not without reason. The French box office was dominated over the weekend by the Dujardin double bill of his eagerly awaited The Players (Les Infidèles) and the re-released The Artist.

In its opening week, The Players, distributed by Bac Films, drew some 900,910 spectators with 501 screens, for an average of 1,789 entries per screen.

Spurred on by its Oscar triumph, The Artist drew some 284,735 admissions after being re-released on 580 screens by WBI, for a running total of 2,636,015 entries.

Memento is not planning a similar re-release for Asghar Farhadi’s Foreign Language Oscar winner A Separation.

“It’s already achieved over one million admissions here in France and is now available on DVD and VOD. We feel we’ve done what we can with it theatrically,” comments Mallet-Guy.