Avignon: A human comedy, funny and touching that sounds right!

A breath of freshness blows on French comedy

Avignon tells the story of Stéphane, an actor from Boulevard who, to seduce a cross -class cross -country actress during the eponymous festival, claims to play in the CID. A lie that he will have to make the time of the festival last … but which will very quickly exceed it!

Nolita

Take a unique decor: the pretty town of Avignon, animated by its famous festival; A pretty troop of colorful actors: Baptiste Lecaplain, Alison Wheeler, Lyes Salem, Elisa Erka, Constance Carrelet and Rudy Milstein; a incredible and dynamic pitch, between love and humor; An original staging… and you will get this unique and sparkling comedy, the first feature film by director Johann Dionnet!

The latter, accustomed to the Avignon Festival where he has long played as an actor, has invested a large part of himself in this first film. Initially designed as a short film in which he played the main character, the project has gradually evolved towards a more ambitious film. We find there the same lively energy as in the short format, but Dionnet this time chooses to withdraw by entrusting the main role to Baptiste Lecaplain, while adopting that of Patrick, a more secondary but just as moving character.

What makes the freshness of Avignon, a Grand Prix at the last International Comedy Film Festival in Alpe d'Huez is that he does not follow the traditional recipe for French comedies. Ruptures of tone, dialogues worthy of the theater, musical interludes: the film mixes both satire, absurd, self -fiction and social criticism, in a familiar register nevertheless very mastered. The staging is deliberately minimalist, sometimes theatrical, almost “craft”. Avignon thus claims its independence and a form of artistic honesty by making a real nose to formatted production.

Laughter, tears … but not only!

The film offers a new look at the world of theater and an authentic immersion in the world of the Avignon Festival, highlighting the behind the scenes of the world of theater and its own problems: the difficulties that independent troops can encounter, class contempt between popular theater and classical theater, the precariousness of the profession of actor …

Nolita

Far from the clichés, this comedy is not content to make people laugh but it offers a lucid critic of the theatrical environment, its hypocrisies, its logic of power or its compromises. By planting his decor at the heart of the festival, the director tries to denounce the real flaws of an often protected, idealized, even sacralized sector of which he himself underwent inequalities. He adopts the codes of comedy there to subtly tackle other deeper themes such as the precariousness of intermittent status, generational conflicts, cultural elitism or the quest for recognition …

A subtle game carried by comedians more true than life

The director and the actors who embody the film's troop (Constance Carrelet, Lyes Salem and Rudy Milstein) are also regulars of the plates in real life. Comedians or playwrights by training, they regularly play in the theater and participated several consecutive years in the Avignon Festival. A unique but as exhausting jovial experience that they managed to transcribe on the screen with brilliance.

Nolita

Headlines or new faces, their art of handling words, their gymnics and their emotions make them convincing, deep and endearing characters who manage to make us laugh out loud, as to make us cry. The authenticity of their festival experience allows them to perfectly account for the extraordinary energy and atmosphere that live in this period. This abyss enriches comedy with a human and social dimension and manages to explore with finesse themes such as lying, love or rivalries.

A true breath of freshness, as funny as it is authentic, Avignon is to be discovered in the cinema now.