Alpe d’Huez 2024: hilarious Avignon is our second favorite of the festival

A huge applause success, Avignon (by and with Johann Dionnet) brings together Baptiste Lecaplain and Alison Wheeler in a perfectly twisting romantic comedy.

Stéphane (Baptiste Lecaplain) and his troupe arrive at the Avignon festival to play My sister comes in, pure piece of boulevard. But by chance he meets Fanny (Elisa Erka, great discovery), a rising actress who plays in a classic, and whose charm does not leave him indifferent. A misunderstanding will lead the young woman to believe that Stéphane is the interpreter of Rodrigue, the main role of Cid by Cornelius. To try to seduce her, he will sink into an untenable lie during the festival…

Are boulevard plays reserved for actors incapable of playing great texts? Is subsidized theater the preserve of snobbish actors with excessive melons? And can we really move from one to the other? A somewhat navel-gazing subject that Johann Dionnet (as good in front of as behind the camera) has the brilliant intuition to transform into a universal rom com, thanks to an angle that will speak to everyone: fear of the gaze of others. It might seem a bit corny said like that, but the film smacks of experience and exudes sincerity, even in the incarnation of its gallery of secondary characters (the excellent Alison Wheeler, Lyes Salem, Rudy Milstein…) finely written and always surprising. Everything moves very quickly, the clever and bone-crunching script refusing the transition scenes that some directors and screenwriters would consider essential.

Avignon is above all constantly hilarious – as evidenced by the uncontrollable and loud laughter lasting three minutes that a lady had during the screening – but never for free. Each valve or punchline is there to give rhythm of course, but also to characterize or advance a member of the troupe. Dionnet also manages to play with the sublime setting that Avignon offers him to bring out lots of little cinematic ideas which, added to each other, end up giving the project an unexpected visual scope.

Applauded as few films are at Alpe d’Huez (that smacks of the public’s prize), Avignon is a favorite, a real one, our second after Love is overrated by Mourad Winter. See you on Saturday evening on the charts?

Avignon does not yet have a release date.