25/02/2025 - Judith Davis delivers a fiery political comedy in the guise of a razor-sharp societal farce about class struggle, feminism, profiteering and ecology

"To untangle this disagreement, everyone has to present their viewpoint, but anger isn’t allowed, otherwise things will escalate." Sticking with the smart, public-spirited vein she initiated with Whatever Happened to My Revolution [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (nominated for the Louis Delluc Prize for Best First Film in 2019), Judith Davis is making her return with the impetuous movie Hello Madness [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a comedy which is as unbridled as it is serious (a “cooked-uncooked” recipe concocted by the filmmaker and her accomplices from the avantage du doute, or "Benefit of the Doubt", collective) and which is released in French cinemas on 26 February via UFO Distribution.

Our lives can often leave us feeling like we’re caught in a loop which we struggle to escape. And in order to escape, we have to really want to, and realise that we often close our ears - caught up in the twists and turns of our own fears and in social norms – to the agonising calls of our deep, innermost selves. Such is the vast terrain upon which Hello Madness works, playful and gently ribbing, imbued with a highly realistic idealism as it follows in the wake of hyperactive singleton Jeanne (the director herself), who heads up an association which writes books with people living in the Paris suburbs, and who has travelled to Brittany for three days to stay with Elisa (Claire Dumas), her long-time graphic designer partner-in-crime, who has made the decision to live an “eco” life in the countryside with her partner (Maxence Tual) and their three children. But the two young, forty-something women no longer recognise one another, one of them scorning the domestic drudgery of her housemaker friend, and the other defending herself from the attacks meted out by "a snob who’s addicted to work because there’s no love in your life."

Their clash happens to overlap with the misadventures of Amaury (Nadir Legrand), a property developer who’s suffering in silence on account of the onerous influence of his incredibly middle-class in-laws, and who’s trying to get his hands on a former psychiatric hospital which is now a facility providing life-long accommodation - a kind of New Age phalanstery in the depths of a forest – whose inhabitants he plans to rehouse (or remove, if necessary) elsewhere, with a view to converting the building into a luxury hotel. In short, conflict is in the air at all levels, both globally and individually, and since "everything is connected", dialogue becomes necessary. But we have to start with ourselves before we look to put fires out, rooting out how we feel deep down, which is never an easy endeavour…

Playing gleefully with caricatures (rich and poor people, men and women, the ecological left and the profiteering right, truth and lie, etc) and with the newspeak-jargon we’re often subjected to ("slow and mindful ecological tourism", "humble luxury destination", "denouement ceremony", "place of tears"), Hello Madness successfully incorporates a wide range of viewpoints (including inner voices) which seem mismatched at first glance, but which ultimately have a lot in common on a radically human level, where joy and sadness outweigh everything else. By using an often hilarious, dynamic ensemble comedy to tackle the pressing topic of the disharmony currently at play in a modern world rife with divides, Judith Davis makes no bones of her agenda ("the loss of politics equates first and foremost to a loss of the self", "we’re also citizens: we carry on creating societies, even in our own homes"), but she does so through such an inventive and pleasant cinematographic approach, ensconced within nature and without pretence, that the message is conveyed seamlessly and with a smile.

Hello Madness was produced by Agat Films and Apsara Films, while Totem Films is steering international sales.

(Translated from French)