This Love Story at the Movies Is Really a Love Story to the Movies

How Pathé Gaumont. How BETC. How French!

“Big Stories,” created by the aforementioned agency for the aforementioned client, is a love story to cinema contained within a love story at the cinema: Two strangers cross paths again and again amid the anonymous yet intimate red seats of a Pathé movie theater. 

What may—or may not—be marinating between the pair, who never speak directly, is expressed in lines from movies like Forrest Gump, Raging Bull, Frozen and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.

It’s a pretty standard boy-meets-girl-but-will-he-get-her? Though since #MeToo and #TimesUp, such stories are now charged with previously unfelt tensions. Like, is dude being kind of creepy? How many times, and in how many ways, can a woman’s body say “Not for you, sir”?! 

But of course, by the spot’s end she gives in, because that’s how these stories go. It’s hard to resist a stranger whose puppy-dog gaze follows you every time you visit your favorite place. Having been reminded that this is the best possible metric for a healthy romance, I will delete Tinder. 

On to more pressing matters: Movies are expensive. It’s not like in olden times, when you could see the penny theater on Wednesday afternoons, or whatever they did in your town when it was still quaint. Who watches movies this much, never mind such a peculiar variety of them? 

These questions aren’t asked in vain. The short film is a promotion for Ciné-Pass, a Pathé Gaumont subscription service that lets you treat the movies like your personal Netflix account. For around twenty bucks a month, based on length of subscription, you can claim those red seats any time you like. Thus, the second question is more a matter of why wouldn’t you watch both Frozen and Raging Bull on the big screen?

“Big Stories” was directed by Xavier Giannoli, with Jade Rose Parker and the classically underdoggy Bastien Ughetto playing starring roles. It’s set to a composition by Michel Shepherd, entitled “Tout Feu Tout Flamme,” which translates roughly to “aflame with passion.” 

The film will be broadcast in pre-session at all Pathé Gaumont theaters.

CREDITS
Client: Les Cinémas Pathé-Gaumont
Client Management: Caroline Ménager, Marianne Chalubert, Anaïs Flores, Helena Josias
Agency: BETC
Agency Management: Jean-Patrick Spitz, Julia Marquette
Executive Creative Director: Stéphane Xiberras
Art Director: Aurélie Scalabre
Copywriter: Olivier Aumard
Creative Music Director: Christophe Caurret
Head of Creative & Entertainment Strategies: Lennie Stern
Traffic: Nathalie Senseigne
TV Producer: Karim Naceur, Slim Trabelsi
Production: La Pac
Sound Production: GUM
Director: Xavier Giannoli
Head of Media: POS