VThis is a confusing and unpredictable movement. Also new. Young people flock to the cinema in droves to see The consentadaptation of Vanessa Springora’s bestseller, published by Grasset in 2020, recounting the sexual and moral influence that the writer Gabriel Matzneff put her through when she was 14 and he was 50.
Today, the entire cinema world is observing the phenomenon, asking itself a lot of questions. Some speak of divine surprise and others of danger regarding the way in which young people have been “touched” by creation through social networks.
As time goes by, a film shown in a cinema logically loses its audience. The fall is often even brutal just eight days after its release. The consent, by Vanessa Filho, released on October 11, contradicts this iron law: 59,000 admissions in the first week, 83,000 in the second (+ 40%) without really more theaters, 142,000 in the third. Then, and again this is unprecedented, the decline is slow: 134,000 in the fourth week and another 86,000 from November 8 to 14. Among all the “old” films on display, it is one of those that holds up the best.
The disappointing start, however, augured a short life and a dismal total of 150,000 entries. We are witnessing the flight of a phoenix of which we do not know where it will land, probably beyond the 600,000 tickets sold. It’s exceptional for a harsh film, in isolation, disturbing and suffocating, prohibited for children under 12, so far from the ingredients of success – action, escape or comedy.
Influx of young girls
It’s also astonishing that a film changes audiences in such a short time. The first week, The consent is mainly seen by arthouse fans, namely older, cultured and well-off people from big cities, drawn from the book’s readers.
Ten days later, on the weekend of October 21 and 22, something strange happened. Multiplex owners, all over the region, are seeing audiences arrive like they never see for an arthouse film: young people under 20, mostly around fifteen, very often girls, as a couple, with friends or with their parents, many from working-class neighborhoods, rarely going to the cinema. They often don’t know that a book preceded the images on the screen.
These young people make up almost half of the film’s audience, the Vertigo Institute has identified. Their arrival is the result of digital word of mouth on TikTok. Transforming a trip to the cinema into an intimate event, dozens of young girls film themselves before entering the room and then leaving it. Before, the laughing face; afterwards, the petrified mine. Some cry.
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