Quebec star comic Patrick Huard’s second feature exploring the troubled state of the modern male, Filiere 13, has divided critics in la belle province but raked in an impressive $700,000 at the box office after only one week in theatres.

”We are very pleased. We just hope it continues,” the film’s distributor Alliance Vivafilm president Patrick Roy told Playback Daily.

Released on one hundred screens across the province the heavily marked film came in second place at the Quebec box office last weekend (behind Piche). The film stars the same trio Huard brought to the big screen with his box office hit Les 3 p’tits cochons (Three Little Pigs): Guillaume Lemay-Thivierge, Claude Legault and Paul Doucet.

The film, which follows the lives of three cops is also written by the same pair who penned Cochons, Claude Lalonde and Pierre Lamothe.

Roy admits that time will tell if the film is a certified hit: ”We launched it and it did well. Now it is a question of word of mouth.”

And the words about the film, at least in media circles, has at times been quite harsh. With a poke at Huard’s Three Little Pigs, Le Devoir film critic Odile Tremblay described his latest effort as ”The Three Little Morons.” And while some entertainment journalists praised the film as excellent others deemed it boring and replete with swearing and lame jokes about homosexuals.

”It is soliciting two extreme opinions. Who is right and who is wrong?” says Roy, who is surprised by what he maintains are the ”virulent” attacks on Huard’s work by some of the province’s journalists. ”He seems to solicit controversy. But Quebecers always stand behind what he does.”

Huard, who is also a successful stand-up comic, and TV and film star — he was the French cop in Bon Cop Bad Cop — was voted favorite male personality at the 2010 Metro Stars, Quebec’s version of the People’s Choice Awards.

Huard is also the star of the hit Quebec TV sitcom Taxi 0 – 22 which HBO is adapting for an American version starring James Gandolfini – a.k.a. Tony Soprano.