It’s easy to scoff at remakes but only if you don’t understand that a US remake will be seen by millions more around the globe than a non- English language original, Mike Goodridge argues.

A high concept French romantic comedy like Heartbreaker shows just how attuned international film can be to a mainstream sensibility. The movie feels like it was created and polished by Hollywood hands. It’s broad, sunny, funny and romantic, and has fabulous Monte Carlo locations. Any implausibilities in its plot and characters are glossed over by the charisma of its movie star leads Romain Duris and Vanessa Paradis.

The only problem stopping it travelling as widely as an English-language film? It’s in French. Enter Working Title Films, a company expert in crafting smart romcoms, which has a remake in development for Universal, the studio which co-produced Heartbreaker for the French market.

The same thing happened with Jerome Salle’s Anthony Zimmer, a French romantic thriller from 2005 featuring Yvan Attal and Sophie Marceau. 

Slick, good-humoured and gorgeously shot in Cannes and around the Cote d’Azur, it was crafted to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.

It’s now being remade as The Tourist by GK Films, Spyglass and Sony with the stratospheric A-list coupling of Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie in the leads.

The irony in both these French films is that they are themselves infused with the influence of Hollywood in their smooth storytelling, colourful locations and photogenic stars. It’s only natural that Hollywood would want to reimagine them in English, with little tinkering to the formula needed.

Two further highly commercial French movies – slapstick comedy The Dinner Game and thriller Pour Elle – have already been remade for release this year. Dinner For Schmucks with Steve Carrell and Paul Rudd opens for DreamWorks/Paramount on July 23 and The Next Three Days with Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks for Lionsgate on Nov 19.

Meanwhile two beloved Swedish properties – Tomas Alfredson’s vampire movie Let The Right One In and Stieg Larsson’s novel The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – are also getting the remake treatment. Matt Reeves has directed the former with Kodi Smit-McPhee from The Road and Chloe Moretz from Kick-Ass in the lead role (US opening date: Oct 1). 

Director David Fincher and producer Scott Rudin are developing the latter – already a series of hit Swedish films – with online buzz pointing to Carey Mulligan as the actress likely to land the plum role of Lisbeth Salander.

These existing foreign films are acting as properties for Hollywood to remake in much the same way as comic books, TV brands or old US movies. There is a proven audience for the concept and therefore it is less of a risk than shooting an untried original story or script. 

Remakes are not being produced to thwart or suppress the visibility of the original films. In the case of Let The Right One In and Dragon Tattoo, the originals found a sizable audience in the foreign language arena in the US. It’s just that the audience for the English language versions is potentially so much bigger.

It’s easy to scoff at remakes but only if you don’t understand that a US remake will be seen by millions more around the globe than a non- English language original.

All too often, in European cinema especially, there is a tendency to look down on calculating attempts to please audiences as artistically corrupt or inauthentic. It’s the age old habit of sneering at the Hollywood studio production machine and treasuring cinema d’auteur as the only true form in the medium.

The divide between audience cinema and art cinema is now so enormous that sometimes it feels like the gulf between political parties. Good cinema and bad cinema.

The divide will be felt no less keenly at Cannes in ten days’ time. 

While a troupe of highbrow critics weighs up the festival selection in the Palais, buyers and sellers a block away in the hotels and apartments along the Croisette will be discussing how they can bring in audiences to independent films that can compete with studio fare. 

Thrillers, horror movies, rom-coms and Hollywood movie star names will be the focus on one side of the Croisette, film as high art on the other.

Of course there has to be room for both types of cinema in every national industry.  And if the right kind of commercial concept can trigger a big-budget English language remake, that can only be a good thing for everyone concerned.

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