The Astérix Cult

It is enough to mention The Transporter, Taxi 4 or Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis, some of France’s highest-grossing flicks of the new millennium. And not only the highest-grossing, but also the most despised by silver screen connoisseurs. As for the criticism, these three movies again have something in common. They all hold a Gérard du cinéma award, French counterpart of the Golden Raspberry. Yet another one, no less deprecated, which boasts as many as three French Razzies and several box office records at the same time: Astérix at the Olympic Games by Frédéric Forestier and Thomas Langmann.

Starring Alain Delon and Gérard Depardieu, but also Michael Schumacher and Zinedine Zidane, this 2008 release was the most expensive French film ever. Though L’Express described it as “rubbish”, it drew dozens of millions of spectators worldwide. Yet it is true that Astérix’s welcome was much warmer in Europe, and especially in France, than outside of it. Out of its overall gross of around €90 million, only €700,000 came from US box offices. So what is behind this Astérix cult in France and its neighbours?

It all began 50 years ago, when humourist René Goscinny and illustrator Albert Uderzo published a comic strip entitled “Astérix the Gaul” in the magazine Pilote on October the 29th 1959, the very day the periodical itself started appearing. Since then, 33 Astérix comic books have been published and translated into around 100 languages. The shrewd Astérix, his strong but not very clever friend Obélix and their faithful four-legged companion Dogmatix immediately won the French readers’ hearts. Whether it was a matter of chance or rather an inevitable result produced by its fresh humour is still a subject of popular and scholarly wonder.

Be it as it may, the snowball was already in motion. The first of their well-known adventures set in a Gaulish village resisting the Roman invaders - thanks to a magic potion - was adopted into an animation film as soon as in 1967. Three decades later, the first live-action piece, Astérix and Obélix Take on Caesar, was released in 1999. This one as well as its two sequels, Astérix & Obélix: Mission Cleopatra and Astérix at the Olympic Games, topped charts all over the Old Continent, but overseas audiences remained seemingly oblivious to their success, very much like the Gauls to the Roman expansion.

This is probably one of the reasons why the Rio Festival organisers have decided to celebrate the pint-sized Gaulish warrior’s 50th birthday with screenings of some of his most popular stories. It is, naturally, difficult for a European who was born with Astérix jumping out of every corner to guess if he will win over the local audiences. In any case it will doubtless be a good test of the proverbial French charm.

Dominika Uhríková