Filming

The film was shot in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region between 25 July and 20 August 2005.^[4] The zoo scenes were shot at the zoo of the French commune of Maubeuge.^[5]

Style

The film is considered close to surrealism by critics due to its unconventional story and bizarre characters. Shot in black-and-white, the film uses absurd gags and contains very little dialogue.^[6][7][8] The directors, however, have insisted Avida is not a surrealist film but rather an homage to surrealism and specifically to Luis Buñuel's 1930 film L'Age d'Or.^[1]

The film is also a tribute to the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. The film's title is an allusion to ávida dollars ("eager for dollars"), which is an anagram of Salvador Dalí. The anagram was coined by the surrealist theorist André Breton, who used it to document Dalí's increasing celebrity status in the United States. The derisive nickname was used by Dali's contemporaries as an implication of commercialism by abandoning surrealism in favour of fame and money.^[9][10][11] At the end of the film, a hand holds a watch in front of the camera so that it obscures the billionaire's face. The final scene features a painting reminiscent of Salvador Dalí and is the only scene in color.

Box office

In France, the film sold 1,220 admissions on its first day. It went on to sell 6,982 admissions in its opening weekend. At the end of its theatrical run, the film sold a total of 22,827 admissions.^[14]

Critical response

Avida received an average rating of 3.1 out of 5 stars on the French website AlloCiné, based on 19 reviews.^[15]

Variety's Deborah Young wrote: "Somewhere between Monty Python, Jacques Tati and a slideshow of New Yorker cartoons, this critique of life's cruel inconsistency confirms the French co-directors' gift for reinterpreting surrealism in a humorously modern key."^[2]