France 2022: Alvan and Ahez with ‘Fulenn’

France returned to their Cest Vous Qui Decidez format for the second year in a row and delivered another comfortable winner:

This is a mess, but it's a glorious one. There's a thousand different ideas in here, mad cap energy and an unconvincing vocal so it's impressive it's not a complete car crash. It's actually one of the very few performances anywhere where I've wanted to immediately watch it again- and for the right reasons. Despite its clear flaws it's catchy, captivating and likeable and should do good business with the televote with France establishing themselves as a country worth looking out for.

There was some nice attention to detail in the national final performance (notably Alvan’s footslide and a few other quick camera cuts) but this is much harder to perfect than ‘Voila’, France's only real undebatable triumph in that area. There's still a striking template to work from and making it all just a bit slicker should be the main focus.

Despite doing well in the national final against more typical jury songs, support on that side is still expected to be an issue and it's possible this does end up with a result similar to Ukraine last year, to which I've seen this compared quite a bit. I understand that view and despite being less coherent this does carry the same vibe although again the performance and vocal will need to be on a higher level than what we’ve seen o farSpeaking of Ukraine, from a points scoring view this would enjoy their possible withdrawal this year more than most. Whilst the song has become the background factor there, this would still benefit from keeping more of that energetic, unique vibe to itself.

It's another strong entry from France in my book, likely to land somewhere in the top 10 in a year where there’s not a whole lot to excite the public.

Personal Rating: 9/10

Competitve Rating: 8/10

Early Prediction: 5th-9th