Bertrand Usclat and Dear Parents open the L’Alpe d’Huez festival

Between a fabulous Bertrand Usclat as MC and a white-hot audience, the Alpe d’Huez Festival got off to a flying start before letting Dear Parents conquer the room. The family prank led by Dussollier and Miou-Miou was a hit.

Monday evening, the Alpe d’Huez Festival opened its doors with a mixture of fun, Côtes du Rhône grand cru and icy wind that heralds the great masses of French comedy. And to set things alight, we entrusted the ceremony to Bertrand Usclat, who literally transformed the room into a giant shaker.
Having just arrived on stage, the little genius of Graze established himself as a crazy showman, supercharged as if he had swallowed three spotlights, carrying out controlled slips and inventive valves with the grace of a tightrope walker in sneakers (a totally misleading image since his black suit, his white shirt with a wing collar and his patent leather shoes were the most beautiful effect).

His duet sung with an AI (an AI that sings in tune, that’s already a miracle, but who responds to Usclat? We were flirting with the paranormal) heated up the giant room of the AgorAlp, which was full to capacity. A little later, his voiceover which plunged us into the inner anguish of an actor drowning in a muddy improv was even more fabulous – the meta nugget could have been as annoying as a patch of ice on the Sarrenne, but between his panicked sighs and his false mantras it became the great moment of this opening.
Great art therefore, streaked by unstoppable jokes which skilfully oscillated between the too much (“ohhhh he dared” hissed my neighbor on the left), political barbs (including a small tackle against Sébastien Chenu) or clever diversions from the obligatory passages of this kind of butt pinching (listing the official partners on dog videos, a brilliant punchline of the evening). A faultless one.

After this thunderous start, and the word from the president (Audrey Lamy, always impeccable), it’s time for the opening film. It seems simple like that, but you have to find THE film capable of speaking to as many people as possible (the excited locals, the journalists stuffed with M&Ms, the partners to be pampered – go please me with all these beautiful people!), to set the tone for the week, in short, to be at the same time popular, accessible, smart and sufficiently embodied for us to say that the festival is off to a good start.

Good news Dear Parents was a success on all these counts.

The story? Three children. A small boss (Arnaud Ducret fantastic as a cynical right-hander), an eternal student (Pauline Clément fabulous), and a critic/writer who is a bit of a loser (Thomas Solivéres fair and well-coiffed) find themselves at their parents’ house. The latter (Miou-Miou and Dussollier) announce to them that they are leaving for Cambodia to found an orphanage there with the money won in the Euro Million. General panic. Vexations, settling of scores, acrobatic hypocrisies and Olympic bad faith: everyone will fight to recover a piece of a cake that has not yet been cut.
Adapted from a successful play, Dear Parents is an Italian farce, a quasi-family closed-door where love and money play Colin-Maillard, and where each dialogue is potentially a grenade unpinned.

Carried by five actors at the summit (of the Alps?), the film finds the balance between social satire, real family comedy with a good sense of rhythm. We will give a special mention to Miou-Miou, imperial as a mother who hides her rigor under a cajoline air, and to Pauline Clément, hilarious as a sister who is both touching, (VERY) unpredictable and constantly on the verge of exploding.

The film multiplies the moments of cinema to extricate itself from its theatrical origin – like this bike ride which starts in bucolic charm and ends in hysterical fury.

And in the room? Generous laughter, immediate applause, with this rare atmosphere where we feel that a film really finds its audience. In any case, the festival seemed to be on good footing. See you Saturday evening to find out if Dear Parents will be one of the favorites. We would happily bet that this team can hit a jackpot.

Official synopsis of the film: When Alice and Vincent Gauthier urgently summon their three children, the siblings arrive in panic fearing the worst… but, good news, their parents have actually hit the Jackpot! The problem: they don’t plan to give them a cent.

Dear Parents. By Emmanuel Patron. In theaters on February 25. Trailer: