France embraces Fahrenheit 9/11

[papau]

http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,12589,1256720,00.html

France embraces Fahrenheit 9/11

Gwladys Fouché Thursday July 8, 2004


Fahrenheit 9/11: drawing audiences from both political persuasions. Photo: AP

It's official: Fahrenheit 9/11 is the favourite film of the so-called "cheese-eating surrender monkeys", otherwise known as the French. Michael Moore's Bush-bashing documentary opened across the country yesterday to rave reviews and high ticket sales.

According to the film's French distributor, more than 4,300 people attended the first public show on Wednesday afternoon - some 3,000 more than showed up to see its closest rival.

Meanwhile, parts of the French press were falling over themselves to praise the Palme d'Or winner of this year's Cannes festival. The editor of the left-leaning daily Libération, Serge July, hailed Moore as the "American Falstaff of documentaries" and "a television show unto himself". The communist newspaper l'Humanité devoted its frontpage to the American satirist, showing him as a Statue of Liberty wearing a smile and a baseball cap.

"I think this movie is a very good thing," said cinemagoer Clément Ipoulet, 25, to Associated Press, outside a cinema on the Champs-Elysées in Paris, where the audience clapped at the end of the film. "Even if a majority of the French thought this, I think that now they have a confirmation."<snip>


More about Fahrenheit 9/11
http://film.guardian.co.uk/fahrenheit911/0,14736,1254483,00.html
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