Judith Davis's "Hello Asylum": A Lively Class Trip

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A depiction of enthusiastic neo-rurals confronted with thwarted ideals, Judith Davis's wacky and touching second feature film is infused with the adventures of the theater collective Advantage of the Doubt.

"Hello Asylum" dares to imagine a utopia capable (perhaps!) of bringing everyone into agreement. (UFO distribution)

by Elisabeth Franck-Dumas

But what a joy to find them again! Yes, it's them: same machine-gun humor, same indignation rooted in the body, same genius for extracting from the contemporary biotope these linguistic irritations, contradictory injunctions and blindness of winners that make society a little sicker every day. Thus the first half-hour of Bonjour l'asile, Judith Davis ' second feature film (after Tout ce qu'il me reste de la révolution , in 2019) featuring the theater collective l'Avantage du doute , is an ascending fireworks display, carried in particular by a paroxysmal soundtrack moving from the deafening noises of the city to those of a home located in the countryside, but filled to the brim with children and their arsenal of screams and noisy toys, in order to target everything that is dysfunctional in the lives of Jeanne (Judith Davis) and Elisa (Claire Dumas), two friends who meet up to work but have lost their common wavelength.

Hilarious, the reunion highlights everything that Elisa, once a cartoonist, sacrificed of her creative life and