Prior to posting, Avalonia, the strange journey had won a place – albeit a minor one – in the history of cinema in France. The traditional animated feature film released by Disney at the end of the year celebrations has become a hostage whose fate has weighed in the negotiations between the multinational and the French cinema institutions around the chronology of the media . Result, Avaloniawhich was released theatrically in the United States (and did not find favor with the public) arrived in France on Friday December 23, directly on the Disney+ platform.
As for its place in the history of the firm with big ears, Avalonia, the strange journey can lay claim to being the first gay hero since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs inaugurated the catalog of Disney feature films in 1938. This innovation – which will prevent the film from being broadcast in a number of lucrative territories – adds to the traditional know-how and good feelings that are the hallmark of the studio. Lack of inspiration.
Despite its toponym borrowed from Arthurian legend, Avalonia is a very ordinary country. We live there like in the 19th centurye century, or as among the Amish, for lack of a source of energy. The country is surrounded by mountains so high that no one has ever managed to cross them. Determined to achieve this, explorer Jaeger Clade, an alpha male of superhuman strength, leads his son Searcher on his quest, who, at the top of a glacier, discovers a plant that generates electricity. Against the will of the patriarch, who has decided to continue on his way, the son turns back and offers light, heating and car traffic to his homeland, while Jaeger’s trail is lost in the glaciers.
Busy educational program
We will recognize in this filiation the relationship between the American “Greatest Generation” (who lived through the Second World War) and the boomers, between heroism and technological progress. All that was missing were generations X, Y, Z and alpha, represented here by Ethan Clade, Searcher’s son, a dreamy teenager, in love with a friendly neighbor. Ethan is a stowaway on a new expedition that takes the boy and his father to an underworld of psychedelic shapes and colors.
Rather than abandoning himself to the reverie that these graphic inventions would allow, the screenwriter Qui Nguyen prefers to assign a heavy educational program to his characters, a program which includes, among other things, the acceptance of differences, the awareness of the interconnection of living beings in a common environment, the questioning of masculine representations. Which would pass like a letter in the mail – unless you were Ron DeSantis, the Republican Governor of Florida who swore Disney’s downfall – if those good intentions were carried away by a compelling dramatic move. Avalonia is made only of agreed adventures and false suspense, partly redeemed by a nice final revelation.
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