Paramount Pictures has put a version of “Lolita Despite Me” cut into 23 parts online for free on the TikTok platform. Is this the start of a new way of seeing films?
Yesterday, like every October 3, was “Mean Girl Day”, in reference to a famous scene from the film – in French titled Lolita Despite Me – which sees Aaron ask Cady (Lindsay Lohan) for today’s date. She answers him: “October 3” and this marks an important moment for her because it is from there that she begins to talk to him “more and more”.
To celebrate this special day, official TikTok account of the filmoverseen by distributor Paramount Pictures, has posted yesterday to its 132,700 subscribers the entire feature film for free! This is no longer available at the time of this writing, since the offer was limited to October 3 only.
But TikTok imposing a short video duration, the comedy Lolita despite me, lasting 1h38, had to be cut into 23 parts of varying length, some barely 45 seconds long and others more than 8 minutes.
Paramount Pictures
It remains to be seen whether this type of broadcast of an entire film “cut to size” will be repeated. Indeed, if the original format of the film was respected, spectators were forced to see it in an obviously disjointed way and especially in vertical format, with the image in very small size as is visible in the tweet below:
If watching films and series on the phone has today become commonplace, will the dismantling of a film into 23 parts and its viewing in even lower quality conditions remain linked to exceptional events like the “Mean Girl Day” or are they likely to reproduce? The question is valid.
Because if the number of views has exploded on Paramount thanks to this practice, nothing says that the firm could not democratize it. Except that the films were not initially designed by their manufacturers to be seen on a tiny screen (vertical format required) and in 23 parts. This could become a potential point of contention between film makers and their distributors.
Paramount Pictures
Lacey Chabert, Rachel McAdams, Lindsay Lohan and Amanda Seyfried
But uses change, and isn’t the main thing that the films are seen and it doesn’t matter in what conditions? Haven’t the parents of TikTok’s young audience been fed VHS of dubious quality, with cropped films and truncated durations? Was it so far from a film posted online in the right format and in its entirety but cut up on TikTok? The debate has begun !
If you want to see or rewatch Lolita Despite Me in horizontal format, with guaranteed image quality and in one go, go to Paramount+.