Here is finally, this film which makes you want all French people or almost to leave their sofa to win the cinema. In three years of pandemic, no work has succeeded in this bet. Keep your head cold, or rather out of the water, because the Submarine Avatar 2 show, if it is excellent news, can do nothing against damage that cinema and culture in general will have to face in 2023.
In three weeks, Avatar: the waterway, from James Cameron, displays 8.6 million tickets sold. It will reach 10 million this weekend. The pace does not weaken, it is even more intense than that of the first avatar (14.6 million admissions). In addition to crushing competition, it can attract up to 500,000 people per day, a number that a flagship exhibition achieves in five months and a successful book in one year.
This second avatar would announce the total return of the cultural outing after three rough years. A triumphant work makes you want art, it is said, including those who are not going to see it. Breakdown. The public returns very strongly to the museum or the castle, a little less to the show. In the cinema, it’s better but a good quarter of spectators are missing. Let us add that in December 2021, thanks to several load -bearing films, the entries were excellent – better than this year – and everyone was talking about Rontada. January 2022 was the start of the cat.
The climate is still different. The year 2023 should be the first without restrictions linked to the COVID (if all is well). Exit habits have also changed and, again, Avatar, beyond its qualities, sets the tone. The public is attracted to the big show, entertainment, beautiful stories, headliners. It does not date from yesterday but the phenomenon increases. And then there is a premium for success. The forts win there, the fragiles lose. “In the private theater, many pieces were walking properly. Now it works strong, or there is no one,” worries Stéphane Hillel, a figure in the profession, on November 21, on Public Senate. People are more selective, decide at the last moment, favor word of mouth, safe values. With this consequence for all disciplines: 2023 could be hostile to atypical and at risk.
New cultural practices stick to Master James Cameron. On the other hand, for the first time in three decades, no French film appears in the top ten entries in 2022. A single “art and essay” exceeds one million tickets, in body, by Cédric Klapisch. Behind him, only a handful of arty films are around 500,000 or 600,000 admissions when they were much more numerous a few years ago. The reason is less their quality than aesthetic adequacy at the room when part of their audience – aged, urban, easy, cultivated – has migrated to domestic screens.
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