Charlie Michael earned his PhD in Film Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently teaches cinema and media studies courses at several institutions in the Atlanta area. He co-edited the Directory of World Cinema: France (Intellect, 2013) and his work has also appeared in SubStance, The Velvet Light Trap, Quebec Studies, French Politics, Culture & Society, and A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema.

This is an exciting, well-researched, and urgent retelling of the tropes and trajectories of contemporary French transnational, blockbuster cinema. Michael’s rich case studies, confident grasp of political and cultural theory, and engaging, fluid writing style make for a compelling account of France’s dalliance with big-budget cinema. His engagement with current sources and methodologies is excellent (each end-of-chapter bibliography is impressively extensive), while the use of box-office statistics, specific production histories, and the reception of the chosen films add much-needed contextual data. French Blockbusters is ultimately all about a series of tense, strategic compromises that the industry has made since the 1980s, and how the emergence of new types of genre films (comedies, action, martial arts, parkour) has encouraged it to “go global.”

• AcknowledgementsList of FiguresForeword by Frédéric Gimello-Mesplomb Introduction: French Blockbusters?Chapter 1: The Lang Plan and its AftermathChapter 2: Popular French Cinema and ‘Cultural Diversity’Chapter 3: The Debatable Destiny of Amélie PoulainChapter 4: Valerian and the Planet of a Thousand CriticsChapter 5: Countercurrents in French Action CinemaChapter 6: Serial (Bad?) French ComediesConclusion: A Disputed Heritage

Charlie Michael earned his PhD in Film Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently teaches cinema and media studies courses at several institutions in the Atlanta area. He co-edited the Directory of World Cinema: France (Intellect, 2013) and his work has also appeared in SubStance, The Velvet Light Trap, Quebec Studies, French Politics, Culture & Society, and A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema.

This is an exciting, well-researched, and urgent retelling of the tropes and trajectories of contemporary French transnational, blockbuster cinema. Michael’s rich case studies, confident grasp of political and cultural theory, and engaging, fluid writing style make for a compelling account of France’s dalliance with big-budget cinema. His engagement with current sources and methodologies is excellent (each end-of-chapter bibliography is impressively extensive), while the use of box-office statistics, specific production histories, and the reception of the chosen films add much-needed contextual data. French Blockbusters is ultimately all about a series of tense, strategic compromises that the industry has made since the 1980s, and how the emergence of new types of genre films (comedies, action, martial arts, parkour) has encouraged it to “go global.”

• AcknowledgementsList of FiguresForeword by Frédéric Gimello-Mesplomb Introduction: French Blockbusters?Chapter 1: The Lang Plan and its AftermathChapter 2: Popular French Cinema and ‘Cultural Diversity’Chapter 3: The Debatable Destiny of Amélie PoulainChapter 4: Valerian and the Planet of a Thousand CriticsChapter 5: Countercurrents in French Action CinemaChapter 6: Serial (Bad?) French ComediesConclusion: A Disputed Heritage