Hugh Grant is not in every British film

Is this a new golden age for British movies? Think about it: a string of box-office hits on both sides of the Atlantic ("Bend It Like Beckham," "Bridget Jones's Diary," "28 Days Later," "Gosford Park," "Notting Hill"); more cinemagoers than at any time since 1971; a clutch of directors thriving in Hollywood; movie-theater numbers at a 43-year high.

It all paints a rosy, upbeat picture, a sort of fall-and-rise epic with stiff upper lip. But is there a happy ending?

Directors and producers who swapped notes at the London Film Festival earlier this month aren't so sure. They cite haphazard funding, parlous distribution, a conservative public, cautious exhibitors, and US-dominated multiplexes. Sometimes, it seems, it's a miracle that British movies ever get made at all.

And to cap it all, many express a frustration that the only British films that seem to get solid up-front financial backing are those whimsical tales about ordinary people in which Hugh Grant gets the girl at the end.

"We seem to be obsessed in this country with films about ordinary people doing ordinary things," says Julian Simpson, a director whose first movie, "The Criminal" - a slick thriller steeped in paranoid twists and twilit violence - was long on plaudits but short on profits.

"We have our 'Full Montys' and 'Calendar Girls.' But that's all we do in this country," he adds. "We ought to be trying to make films that are good films, regardless of whether they succeed or fail at the box office."

It's amazing, nonetheless, what a few box-office successes can do. Just over a decade ago, British film was in a sorry state. After a post-war heyday dominated by the Ealing comedies and epic directors such as David Lean, British cinema lost the plot in the 1970s and '80s. Television dominated, movie theaters were shut down en masse, and the only output of any note, the occasional classic aside, was James Bond.

The renaissance began to flower in the early 1990s, when a combination of public money from the national lottery and the astute output of writers like Richard Curtis ("Four Weddings and a Funeral," "Bridget Jones," "Notting Hill") set the cameras rolling again. Shrewd tax breaks introduced six years ago accelerated the trend, making it cheaper to shoot and produce movies in Britain.

Suddenly there was cash to play with and a formula that Britain somehow gained a monopoly on: the romantic comedy.

There was an audience, too. The introduction of multiplexes in Britain reawakened interest in cinemagoing as an alternative to a night at the pub.

Today, one quarter of Britons go to the movies at least once a month.

And yet it is rarely British films they go to see. Less than 1 in 10 movies shown at British cinemas is homegrown.

"We can't compete with America because we don't have the money that America has," says Asif Kapadia, a young director whose debut feature, "The Warrior," won a string of awards at the London festival. "There are only three industries that really work: the Indian, the American, and the French, where their own audience goes to see their films."

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