French comedy: vive la difference!

Long live Franco-British friendship, said Nicolas Sarkozy during his whirlwind trip to London and Windsor, stressing the cultural ties linking his nation and ours. Yet nothing could illustrate better the difference between those two cultures than a comedy currently taking the French box office by storm. Almost 15m people, approaching one in every four Frenchmen, have already been to see French comedian Dany Boon's (right) low-budget film Bienvenue Chez les Ch'Tis in the three weeks since it opened.

The film tells the story of a southern post office manager Philippe, played by Kad Merad (above left), whose attempt to cheat his way into a cushy job on the Cote d'Azur leads to his being sent up north as punishment. He is assigned to Bergues, a small town near Dunkirk, close to the Belgian border where the locals - the Ch'Tis of the title - speak cheutimi, a dialect that mixes medieval Picard with Flemish and which even native French-speakers struggle to understand. Philippe must endure such local rituals as eating cheese on toast drenched in coffee before eventually falling in love with the place and with his madcap co-workers, led by Boon.

The farce's success is phenomenal – it's taken £60m at the box office already. But asked about a potential English opening, a publicist warned that "this is a very French film". So far, only the Cine Lumiere, a French cultural centre in Kensington, has indicated it plans to show the film. A version with English subtitles, renamed Welcome to the Sticks, has been seen by the cinema trade paper Screen International, which reports that the humour does not cross over well, "despite some heroic efforts at translating language-based slapstick..."

"The whole idea of cheutimi seems hysterically funny to your average French person,” says the paper, "but may sink like a boule for non-native speakers." Nor are its chances increased by Boon's "over-the-top gurning". Vive la difference!