Amélie Follow-up Fights to Prove It's French

A new French cinema blockbuster was at the centre of a bitter legal battle yesterday as a Paris court was asked to decide whether it was actually French.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet's film, Un long dimanche de fiançailles (A very long engagement), a first world war love story starring - like the director's previous worldwide hit, Amélie - the elfin Audrey Tautou, opened in cinemas across France last week. It is already a huge domestic success, drawing an audience of more than 1.6 million people so far.

With a budget of €45.8m (£32m), it is the third most expensive film in the annals of French cinema and, as Mr Jeunet has repeatedly pointed out, is set in France, was filmed in France, is spoken in French and kept some 600 French technicians, 80 French actors and 1,500 French extras employed for more than two years.

But two associations of French film producers, representing small independent production houses and big names such as Pathé and Gaumont, argued in court yesterday that Un long dimanche did not qualify as a wholly French production - and should therefore not benefit from generous public subsidies.

The case, which will determine the extent to which foreign film producers can benefit from French and European public subsidies, is seen as crucial for France's film industry and its much-prized "cultural exception", which deems that films are not "products" subject to trade rules. A verdict is due at the end of the month.

"To qualify for the aid accorded to French and European films, not just the film itself but the company that makes it have to meet strict criteria," Marc-Olivier Sebbag of the independent producers' union, SPI, said yesterday.

"The company behind this film is a trojan horse for Hollywood. And, to be blunt, French subsidies should not be funding US majors."

On the standard French subsidy checklist, Un long dimanche scores 98 out of 100 points for Frenchness. But the production company, 2003 Productions, while incorporated under French law, is 34% owned by Warner France, a subsidiary of the Hollywood giant. Warner France's boss, Francis Boespflug, also heads 2003 Productions.

"This company is just a shell, created by Warner with the sole aim of grabbing subsidies," said Alain Rocca, an independent producer who helped to bring the case.

"That's what we're denouncing. It's a question of our cultural identity - Hollywood majors may be indispensable to cinema, but they don't need public subsidies to survive."

The French government official who referred the case to the tribunal appeared to agree with the producers. "There is every evidence," he wrote in his recommendation, read in court, "to suggest that this purpose-made company is not a genuine production house but an extension of Warner."

Mr Rocca denied that the lawsuit was aimed at Mr Jeunet or his film, which was "a magnificent French film that we are proud of, and that will draw audiences around the world". But, he told the newspaper Le Parisien, "the subsidy cake was only so big and, if the American giants started taking a slice, there would be only crumbs left for the small independent producers at the heart of European cinema".

Un long dimanche - in which the whimsical heroine, Mathilde, tries to discover the fate of her fiancé, one of five soldiers sentenced to death for deliberately wounding themselves to escape the horror of the trenches - is the long-awaited follow-up to Amélie, the most successful French film export for decades.

It has been given a rapturous reception by most French critics although some, dubbing it "Amélie goes to war", have portrayed it as a rather cynical attempt to cash in on the success of the earlier hit. The film, in which Jodie Foster also has a cameo part, is due to open in Britain and America in the New Year.

The 150 to 200 French films produced every year qualify for a variety of subsidies, mostly distributed by the Centre National de la Cinématographie, which last year disbursed a total of €475m raised from a range of taxes on the entertainment industry.

Under a "support fund", film producers receive €0.74 for every cinema ticket sold up to 500,000, and €0.65 for 500,000 to 5m. If Un long dimanche reaches that figure - which it should do comfortably, as Amélie managed 8.6m - 2003 Productions will receive some €3.3m, equivalent to much of the film's promotional budget in France.