Drag Race France Season 1

Drag Race France Season 1 Episode 7 – Sororité makeover challenge: Review & Power Ranking

August 6, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

Bonjour bonjour bonjour, mes chers lecteurs! Welcome to my review and power rankings of the seventh episode of Drag Race France Season 1 – “Sororité,” a Drag Race France makeover challenge all about sisterhood.

Makeover challenges have fallen out of being Drag Race mainstays over the past few years. While you might be tempted to blame that on the pandemic, it actually started earlier than that – possibly because of spoilers. With the show’s popularity growing every year, it gets harder and harder to pull in random strangers for a makeover challenge just like it gets more challenging to have an in-studio audience for a challenge.

Drag Race France skirts the issue by relying on close friends as make-over partners, and this elite group of top four queens rises to the occasion. You really get the sense that they were energized by working with their best friends, because each of them delivered on the runway.

Did they deliver so well that the only choice was to forgo awarding a win in favor of a lip sync tournament? I’m not sure. It seemed clear there was a top two and a bottom two in this runway presentation. The problem was that Lolita Banana was in the top two, and La Grande Dame was in the bottom two.

Of course, the show knew there was a one-in-two shot of Lolita winding up in the top for the challenge. Despite the judges beating up on her the past few weeks, she has proven to be a competitive queen and her distinct mug meant she’d have a natural advantage in a makeover challenge. You can’t fabricate a lip sync tournament out of nowhere, because all of the queens need to be prepared on all three of the songs – which means the queens likely had some inkling of this twist even before Nicky Doll announced it on the runway.

Even if there was a clear top two and the twist was telegraphed, it didn’t feel unfair. This is an indisputably strong top four and it made sense to ask them all to prove themselves one more time rather than simply relying on the challenge to determine a lip sync and a final three.

What felt unfair was dismissing a stronger lip sync performer in the final elimination. Alas, that’s the theme of the past week of Drag Race! There’s only so much you can do in the edit to make a losing queen seem like she slayed the performance. While lip sync tournaments make for exciting episodes, the secret truth is they almost always take some amount of past performance into account – even in a blow-out.

We’re left with one of the most evenly-matched top trios in Drag Race herstory – but who is most-likely to take home the crown? I have one final power ranking for you, and it’s not the same as last week’s Episode 6 power rankings. Do you agree on my predicted winner? Let me know in the comments below.

If you want to watch Drag Race France you can sign up for WowPresentsPlus to watch the many worldwide Drag Race franchises for $4.99 a month or $50 a year. (Note that if you’re in the US you will need to use a VPN to “visit” another country to see the US Franchise.)

Lecteurs, start your engines. Et, que la meilleure Drag Queen gagne!

Drag Race France Season 1 Episode 6 – Un Parfum de Drag: Review & Power Ranking

July 30, 2022 by krisis 1 Comment

Bonjour bonjour bonjour, mes chers lecteurs! Welcome to my review and power rankings of the sixth episode of Drag Race France Season 1 – Un Parfum de Drag, which revisits one of the all-time classic Drag Race branding challenges from Season 5.

(Now that All Stars Season 7 has concluded, Drag Race France will have the Saturday spot for its final three weeks to give me time to watch Drag Race Down Under! I’ll be back with my first Down Under post tomorrow, plus a special wrap-up for All Stars.)

Drag Race has many standard challenge formats that are guaranteed to show up in each season. This consistency allows queens to play a meta-game of expectations within the competition, where they are biding their time (or wracked with terror) about an upcoming Ball challenge or Snatch Game.

The remaining five queens were right to point this out at the top of the episode. They’d already been through a ball, acting, singing, and Snatch Game – all core Drag Race Challenges.

The one guaranteed challenge even on non-English season they had yet to face was personal branding, but it’s the challenge that takes the most varied forms.We’ve seen queens do everything from peddling their own autobiographies, to inventing their own flagship merch, to our recent All-Winners cast making up a TikTok dance.

Drag Race France decided to reference perhaps the best-remembered of all of the dozens of Drag Race branding challenges, Season 5‘s “Scent of a Drag Queen.” That was the challenge that spawned iconic ads for Coco Montrese’s nonsensical “Ru Animale,” Detox’s seductive “Heroine,” Roxxxy Andrews’ longstanding personal brand of “Thick & Juicy,” Alyssa Edward’s oft-referenced “Alyssa’s Secret,” Jinkx Monson’s Drag Race institution “Delusion,” and Alaska’s “Red” – which birthed her single “Your Make-Up Is Terrible” and nine years later inspired the name of her 2022 album!

Whew. Seriously, if you’ve never watched it, it’s one of the most memorable and meme-able episodes of all time.

This challenge was proof that we’ve wound up with the correct final five queens, because I can’t imagine any of the eliminated contestants creating such solid work when left to their own devices. All five artists succeeded at making commercials that were proficient and altogether ridiculous.

Even amongst their successes, the challenge showed the clear divide between the queens who understand the power of their brands versus the ones who are simply game to make a silly spoof.

That resulted in one of the most emotionally powerful lip syncs across all of the many Drag Race franchises over the past 14 years. This is ART, y’all. Both queens explored what it means to have regrets and to strip yourself not just of your clothes but down to your very soul. They showed us how you effectively de-drag in a lip sync without it being a sign of desperation. They showed us how ti interact with the other queen in a lip sync with consent and collaboration.

Wow. Nicky cried off an eyelash! If you love Raven and Jujubee doing “Dancing On My Own,” this is a must-watch.

Oh, and there were puppets!

Now it’s time to rank our four remaining queens, analyze their commercials, and applaud their runways! Who is currently on the top of our well-matched Top 3? It’s not the same as last week’s Episode 5 power rankings…

Lecteurs, start your engines. Et, que la meilleure Drag Queen gagne!

Drag Race France Season 1 Episode 5 – Popstars & Night of 1,000 Mylène Farmers: Review & Power Ranking

July 24, 2022 by krisis 1 Comment

Welcome to my review and power rankings of the fifth episode of Drag Race France Season 1 – Popstars, the Drag Race France girl group challenge accompanied by a “Night of 1000 Mylène Farmers” runway celebrating one of France’s biggest pop stars.

Often, the biggest challenges of a pop music theme on Drag Race aren’t for the queens but for production. It’s not easy to effectively parody pop music without seeming too silly, and harder still to fabricate a credible pop song on demand for a reality show.

The American Drag Race franchise often absolves itself of this duty altogether by repurposing RuPaul songs for its many musical challenges. Ru produces a slew of charming dance music, but it doesn’t often line up with trends in pop.

I feel as though the success of “Break Up (Bye Bye)” for Drag Race UK in 2019 finally shook up this habit, showing that producing real, current pop music for the show could pay off in increased attention in other media. That worked in part because the UK has a voracious music market that celebrates TV pop stars more than America does, but it didn’t hurt that the song was damn good.

Since then, Drag Race has stepped up its musical game for its so-called “girl group” challenges – and, I’d say the two versions of “Boom Boom” on this episode are near the top of that staircase. This song songs exactly like the sort of high-tempo disco-influenced pop delivered by European girl groups (and even some K-pop).

Not only was the song good, but Drag Race France completely avoided the trope of having any artist singled out for her intense struggle as a newfound singer/songwriter and dancing queen. Even though Paloma did poorly in the challenge, at no point did the edit lean into a “I can’t sing at all” self-confidence spiral or a “I think I can sing, but I can’t” fit of delusion. While the queens had different levels of success in the challenge, none of them were an abject failure. The same is true for the “Night of 1000 Mylène Farmers” runway.

The strong performance from the queens this episode exposed that this season’s single weakness may be in its mercurial judging. We are now at the point of the season where all six of the queens are well-round professionals with an eye for detail. Yet, the judges are still finding minor – and often invisible – elements about them to critique. Nicky Doll seems to be giving the most practical and even-handed advice, but her companions Daphné Bürki and Kiddy Smile often seem to be critiquing a different competition entirely.

It can be hard to understand the nuance of Drag Race judging in a different language. Imagine trying to understand Michelle Visage’s pop culture references and promiscuity jokes in translation! Would we still understand that there is a layer of motherly warmth beneath her bitchy exterior if we were relying only on subtitles?

That’s the question I have about Daphné Bürki and Kiddy Smile. Daphné has given incisive critiques, but sometimes it feels as though she is expecting fashion modeling instead of drag. And, it is hard to tell if Kiddy Smile is naturally laconic or if he is holding back to make up for the extreme conflict of interest of La Grande Dame being his own drag daughter.

The inconsistent judging would be dragging this season down more if there wasn’t such a clear divide in the field of queens between the Top 3 and everyone else that has been evident since week one. Elips’ deep run into the competition might be the only true surprise of the season if things continue to play out as they have, which somewhat forgives the judges since the outcome will be the same regardless of what they say.

Now it’s time to rank the queens, dissect their performances, and discuss their runways! This results in a shuffle of the top three from last week’s Episode 4 power rankings, as well as a continued joust for 4th place.

Lecteurs, start your engines. Et, que la meilleure Drag Queen gagne!

Drag Race France Season 1 Episode 4 – Snatch Game: Review & Power Ranking

July 17, 2022 by krisis 4 Comments

Welcome to my review and power rankings of the fourth episode of Drag Race France Season 1 – the inaugural Drag Race France Snatch Game!

There are a few elements of RuPaul’s Drag Race that get imported to every international franchise – including Snatch Game, “lip sync for your life,” the ball challenge, and the library mini-challenge.

Of those, Snatch Game can be the one that translates most awkwardly. Even for countries that have their own history of drag queens impersonating celebrities do not necessarily have the same history of campy “fill in the blank” TV game shows.

Snatch Game is obvious enough that audiences can easily push past that unfamiliarity, but it puts queens at a disadvantage. If you’ve never seen your local celebrities in a purposefully-parodic setting like the original Match Game or Hollywood Squares, it can be hard to find the right rhythm and tone for impersonating them inside of it.

International Snatch Games also pose a challenge for audiences watching from abroad! So much of Snatch Game involves cultural references and double entendres that even with the best set of captions a lot can be lost in translation. There were points in this episode where even after I read the English and French captions I still wasn’t in on the joke.

That means that international viewers can sometimes have a very different take on Snatch Game than local ones, and in these cases we should always defer to the opinions of the local viewers in the market on who produced the best and funniest impersonation. I took a shot at digging into them by watching videos of all of the people the queens parodied this episode, but my French skills just aren’t strong enough to render any definitive opinions on their performances.

What I can render definitively is that there is a certain streak of aloofness to Drag Race France that is culturally French but casually cruel. Between Lolita Banana’s breakdown, La Big Bertha’s obvious frustrations, and the exclusion of Elips, the lack of a warm heart to this franchise became obvious in this episode.

Sometimes that can be down to the scrappy nature of Season 1 – we also saw Canada struggle with metaphorical warmth in its first season. Yet, for other franchises it has become a theme, as with the helter-skelter quality of Drag Race Holland.

That made for a strong challenge and runway, but an episode that left me feeling sad for several queens who are giving this their all.

With my somewhat somber first impressions out of the way, let’s get to my Power Rankings for the first Drag Race France Snatch Game! This episode seemed to emphasize a specific top three that is different from my my week three power rankings, as a clear divide emerged between the finalists and every one else.

Lecteurs, start your engines. Et, que la meilleure Drag Queen gagne!

Drag Race France Season 1 Episode 3 – The French Ball: Review & Power Ranking

July 10, 2022 by krisis 1 Comment

Welcome to my review and power rankings of the third episode of Drag Race France Season 1 – “The French Ball”!

I can’t even begin to imagine how intimidating a ball challenge must be as a contestant on Drag Race. You have no control over which of the many looks in your suitcase will be worn back-to-back for your first pair of looks, and you have 12 hours or less to construct your third one! Plus, rumor has it that queens get less than one hour to make the change from each look to the next, which includes make-up alterations.

That’s a lot of stress, especially early in the season when queens are still getting used to the rhythm of TV production!

This French cast acquitted themselves well across three categories – Ma France et moi, French Clichés, and the Cannes Film Festival design challenge. It helped that the unusual material restrictions for this design challenge were actually quite loose – the queens were free to use fabric to construct their looks, as long as they had multiple beach elements incorporated.

The episode delivered looks, but it also made clear which character archetypes our queens are portraying. We have our clear front-runner, our bridesmaid-not-bride, our young queen with a growth arc, our reciprocal arcs of growing and shrinking confidence, and a queen who is unfairly maligned by the judges so she can later enjoy a comeback.

Does that mean this season is already becoming too formulaic? Or, was the casting so good that the queens are naturally snapping into familiar Drag Race tropes?

I think that’s the right question to be asking in the third week of a tight eight-episode run. With the season reaching the halfway point with Snatch Game next week, the queens who aren’t on the ascent either need to surprise us or prepare to sashay away.

Now that Drag Race France has settled into it’s regular release day, I’ve moved my recap up to Sunday so I don’t have to wait a full week after each episode to recap the next one! We’ll see how that schedule shakes out with Drag Race Canada in the mix starting next week, with Drag Race Philippines following soon thereafter.

With my general impressions of the episode out of the way, let’s get to my Drag Race France Episode 3 Power Rankings for The French Ball! The middle layer of the rankings has had a shuffle from my week two power rankings – with last week’s bottom queens on very different trajectories!

Lecteurs, start your engines. Et, que la meilleure Drag Queen gagne!