“To ensure the success of the film ‘Le Consentement’, thanks to a young and popular audience, TikTok succeeds where cultural politics have failed for decades.

VIt is a confusing and unpredictable movement. Also new. Young people go to the cinema in large numbers ConsentAn adaptation of Vanessa Springora’s bestseller, published by Grasset in 2020, tells the story of the sexual and moral influence that writer Gabriel Matznef had on her when she was 14 and he was 50.

Today, the entire film world is observing the phenomenon, asking itself a lot of questions. Some speak of the divine wonder, others of the danger of how young people have been “touched” by creativity through social networks.

As time goes by, the film shown in the cinema logically loses its audience. The drop is often brutal even just eight days after its release. ConsentVanessa Philo, released on October 11, defies 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 between November 8 and 14. Among all the “old” films on display, it is one of the best.

However, a disappointing start led to a short life and a miserable 150,000 records. We see the flight of the Phoenix, the flight of which we do not know where it will land, probably beyond the 600,000 tickets sold. It is exceptional for a tough film, isolated, disturbing and suffocating, forbidden for children under 12, so far from the ingredients of success – action, escapism or comedy.

An influx of young girls

It is also amazing that the film changes the audience in such a short time. first week Consent It is mainly seen by arthouse lovers, in particular, older, cultured and affluent people from big cities, drawn from book readers.

Ten days later, on the weekend of October 21st and 22nd, something strange happened. Multiplex owners, all over the region, see audiences coming like never before for an arthouse film: young people under 20, mostly under fifteen, very often girls, as couples, with friends or parents, many from the working class. districts, rarely goes to the cinema. They often do not know that the book precedes the images on the screen.

The Vertigo Institute found that these young adults make up nearly half of the film’s audience. Their arrival on TikTok is the result of digital word of mouth. Transforming a trip to the cinema into an intimate event, dozens of young women take photos of themselves before entering the room and then leaving it. Until then, laughing face; Then the petrified mine. Some are crying.