The French planes were relatively good. The pilots were relatively good from their success rate in combats.My understanding is that France had to choose between the army and Air Force, and prioritised spending on the army. The Brits went for Air Force plus navy. The Germans went for army AND Air Force by spending money they just imagined into existence. So the French Air Force in 1940 was the sort of shitshow the RAF would have been a couple years earlier when they were just getting modern aircraft, and it’s not like the RAF were on the cutting edge tactically.
The problem was with the sortie rate (0.9 a day for fighters in theater, compared to 2-3 from raf fighters and 3-4 from German fighters) and the plane numbers in theater (roughly 25% of French fighters were on the front line at the start of the battle of France).