A drama as funny as it is tender! Written by Florence Longpré and Guillaume Lambert and directed by Guillaume Lonergan, Audrey came backa series awarded the Grand Prix and the Special Prize for interpretation at the CannesSeries Festival in 2022, is broadcast this Thursday at 11:10 p.m. on Canal+ (and available in full on MyCanal) on the occasion of the launch of season 6 of the Riviera festival this Friday, of which the encrypted channel is a partner.
This Quebec fiction follows Audrey, a 34-year-old woman (played by the stunning Florence Longpré) who miraculously wakes up from a long coma on her hospital bed, sixteen years after being found unconscious on a country road. “With Florence, we were fascinated by the theme of waking up and the shock that it could cause to come back to life. There were so many metaphors with simply this idea of the return”, says Guillaume Lambert, that 20 minutes met during season 5 of CannesSeries.
Walk, talk, get up… Relearn everything
If the series is illustrated by its authenticity, it is because the two screenwriters have done documentary research work upstream. “We had access to a lot of testimonies. It’s one of the richest experiences I’ve had to have had access to people from several generations who have been in a coma, to talk to mothers who still have a son in a coma,” explains Guillaume Lambert.
The series thus tells how Audrey will have to relearn all the gestures of everyday life. “We didn’t want to romanticize, we wanted to show the difficulties of physical and psychological rehabilitation. Each episode is built around a verb: speak, eat, get up, imagine, etc. It was the verbs that Audrey had to reclaim that built the story,” explains Guillaume Lambert.
Reconnecting and adapting to a new world
Over the course of the episodes, Audrey will also have to recover her memory and forge links with the members of her family, whose existence was turned upside down on the day of the tragedy. “His memories come back in snatches. People who have been in a coma have told us: “You have to let go of the person you were before the coma because you will never be the same person again. So, it was like putting little drops of what she was before while being a whole new person, and playing a young girl in the body of an adult, and playing the total confusion at the start, “says Florence. Longpre.
Audrey, who was 17 at the time of the accident, wakes up in the body of a 34-year-old woman. “It was very rewarding, but it’s really the most difficult role I’ve had to play in my life. It was very dizzying and I was afraid of crashing, ”continues the screenwriter and actress.
A shock wave that splashes all around
Built on several temporalities, the series tells the life of Audrey before the coma, the life of the family during Audrey’s coma and the life after the awakening of the young woman. During the sixteen years of her coma, many things have changed around Audrey, society as well as her family and loved ones. “The theme of waking up splashes the whole family,” emphasizes Florence Longpré. “It’s like a shock wave, everyone wakes up when someone wakes up. It’s like a snowball effect ”, abounds Guillaume Lambert.
The success of this fiction is based on sharp, funny lines, an impeccable cast and its ability to play with breaks in tone. Despite its grave theme, Audrey Returns never sinks into pathos.
Best of all, the series always strikes the right balance between humor and emotion. “Florence and Guillaume like to laugh at the little hassles of everyday life. There is that in the script all the time”, greets the director Guillaume Lonergan. And to continue: “In all their projects, there is this mixture of comedy and drama. All the actors, and in particular the two parents, Denis Bouchard and José Deschamps, are comic actors at the base, but who have also done drama. To find this balance, it is played at all levels, but the actors are really the key. »
The series also plays the dreamlike card by plunging us into the meanders of Audrey’s psyche. “We allow ourselves to play between the real, the past and dreamlike”, sums up Guillaume Lambert. Audrey is back turns out to be a joyful fable about resilience, an ode to the meaning and taste of life rediscovered!