Come As You Are

Geoffrey Enthoven’s Come as You Are has been named Best Feature Film: Comedy at the 22nd Cinequest Film Festival (28 February-11 March) in California. The award at the innovative San José-based fest constitutes the movie’s milestone fifteenth decoration. The good news follows in the slipstream of previous positive tidings on the strong international sales figures and the movie’s strong theatrical release in France.

Come as You Are was laurelled in the festival’s Maverick Competition. Director Geoffrey Enthoven had been at the 2010 edition of Cinequest with his previous feature The Over The Hill Band. The festival’s Michael Rabehl described Come as You Are as ‘a brilliant new comedy that deservedly landed the Grand Prix des Amériques at the Montréal World Film Festival’. Earlier this year, Come as You Are screened at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. The film’s leading roles are played by Robrecht Vanden Thoren, Gilles De Schryver, Tom Audenaert and Isabelle De Hertogh. Gerd Schelfhout was responsible for the photography and the editing was taken care of by Philippe Ravoet.

Come as You Are, Geoffrey Enthoven’s hit film, is becoming more and more of an international sales success. The feature was recently sold to distributors in Canada, Germany, Spain, Brazil, HBO Europe and even Iran, setting the counter to 23 territories already. Today, the film is set for theatrical release in France. Come as You Are is a Mariano Vanhoof production, from a screenplay written by Pierre De Clercq

In France, where it is distributed by Claude Lelouch’s Les Films 13, the film is released on 94 prints. The French media has already reacted enthusiastically to the film, with Première giving it three stars out of four and proclaiming: “This new gem of Flemish cinema… We love it!” Télé 7 jours awarded the movie four stars out of five and speaks of “pure moments of comedy”, while A nous Paris surpasses all in praise and grants the film a perfect five out of five: “Come As You Are is the kind of film that makes you want to life your life to the fullest.”

The legendary French director of such classic films as A Man and a Woman (Un homme et une femme), And Now My Love (Toute une vie) and Bolero (Les uns et les autres) talks about his Flanders film favourite, Geoffrey Enthoven’s Come as You Are (Hasta la vista), and what the film did to him when he saw it at the fortieth edition of the Montreal World Film Festival last year. ‘I have rarely got such a kick out of discovering a film that was so completely unexpected,’ the filmmaker admits.

‘I am in this multiplex at the Montreal World Film Festival. While I am waiting to go to a master class I’m giving, I decide to go into one of the cinemas at random. A film is starting and I have no idea what I am about to see. Nothing out of the ordinary up to now.

As I sit down in my seat, I am totally oblivious to the fact that it is about to roll away and that I am going to be thrown into the world of those people for whom I rarely spare a second thought. But it is the exact opposite that happens: I find a blind man staring at me through the screen of my prejudices.’

Guy Lee Thys’ new feature Mixed Kebab and Geoffrey Enthoven’s award-winning Come As You Are have been selected for the Cinequest Film Festival (28 February-11 March) in California. Three shorts also made it to the pioneering fest's final line-up: Kevin Meul’s The Extraordinary Life of Rocky, Boris Sverlow’s Shattered Past and Nicolas Daenens’ 27.

Mixed Kebab, which will premiere internationally in the Global Landscapes Competition of the festival, is praised by Cinequest’s Terra Wood for the way the ‘electrifying and multicultural cast brilliantly captures courage, tolerance and the beauty of love conquering hate’. Geoffrey Enthoven returns to Cinequest after his previous feature The Over the Hill Band was presented as part of the 2010 edition of the fest.

The Palm Springs International Film Festival (5-16 January), traditionally the place-to-be for any feature with Oscar ambitions, has for the second year in a row selected five Flemish directors for its line-up. This year’s selected films are Bavo Defurne’s North Sea Texas, Geoffrey Enthoven’s Come As You Are, Nicolas Provost’s The Invader, Michaël R Roskam’s Bullhead and Christophe Van Rompaey’s Lena. John Shanks’s Last Winter, a co-production with Flanders, will also screen at Palm Springs.

Last year saw the selection of a record-breaking five Flemish features for Palm Springs. The selected films were part of a mini-focus – ‘the Flanders Five’ – that put the spotlight on the wave of Flemish talent and the diversity of films from Flanders. For its 2012 edition, Palm Springs has once again selected five Flemish directors.