26 June 2003
Towards the end of last year I saw two films starring Audrey Tautou: À la folie… pas du tout and Dirty Pretty Things . Neither had a particularly big promotional campaign, but I did see trailers and posters for both.
The trailer for À la folie… made me wish I could see the film again, because I saw it after (about half an hour after, in fact) I’d seen the film. It was cleverly edited to spin the events in the film into something else, something light and frothy and romantic. This does fit the film — the first half of it does the same thing — but it’s clear the film makers were also playing on the sweetness of Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain , the astoundingly successful (and astoundingly good) Paris-based romantic comedy that gave Audrey Tautou an international profile.
As I recall, À la folie… went for this angle right from the beginning. The opening scene showed Tautou smelling roses, gallons of the things, choosing them for her boyfriend. So this wasn’t surprising or even a bad thing, just amusing.
Dirty Pretty Things, by contrast, had a pants trailer with a dodgy voiceover. The film itself was good, a nice gritty, socially-aware thriller, but the trailer descended into melodrama. What it didn’t do, despite its faults, was portray it as some kind of vehicle for Audrey Tautou. The poster for the UK release had Chiwetel Ejiofor in it, so why doesn’t the poster for the US release? It doesn’t even mention the man’s name1 !
In À la folie… Tautou had the lead role; it was all about her an her character. But Dirty Pretty Things wasn’t all about her, nowhere near. Ejiofor put in a fine performance in the lead role. It’s not as if it’s a difference in visibility — no-one over here knew who he was either. There’s absolutely no need to sell what’s one of the best British films of recent times (although it’s interesting to note that none of the main characters are white Brits; that’s kinda the point) as ‘Audrey Tautou’ .
1 Yes, I know it does. The point is it’s unreadable on the web.
