Quentin Dupieux

[Never Cursed]

Quentin Dupieux (1974-)

Steak (2007)
Rubber (2010)
Wrong (2012)
Wrong Cops (2013)
Réalité (2014)
Au poste! (2018)
Le Daim (2019)
Mandibules (2020)
Incroyable mais vrai (2022)
Fumer fait tousser (2022)
Yannick (2023)
Daaaaaalí! (2023)
Le Deuxième Acte (2024)

[therewillbeblus]

Quentin Dupieux's 2018 feature Keep an Eye Out (AKA Au Poste!) will receive what I believe is its first US release on March 5 courtesy of upstart streaming distributor Dekanalog

Nice, apparently a reddit user made decent fan subs back in 2018 which are the only ones uploaded on backchannels - I haven't tested them though

[therewillbeblus]

Keep an Eye Out (French title: Au Poste!) was okay. In a sense, it's expectedly par for the course following Quentin Dupieux's stamped reinvention of person-in-environment eccentricities, but there's something missing as he whittles down the extravagance of movement necessary to keep his films' narratives alive, and instead opts to make more-or-less a static chamber comedy. Even at a tight 70 minutes, Dupieux relies almost exclusively on conversation, and can't sustain the momentum that his fantastical twists on it objects or creatures supply, revealing how vital they are to the worlds he builds (though some minor physical deformity gags go a long way). The parts that work will trigger belly laughs though- from sharp irreverence to braindead farce- and it's no surprise that the best moments occur when we do get a surreal visual manipulation. I'm not sure if it was due to a lopsided rhythm, but after a laugh-less 15 minutes, the film peaks with the one-eyed cop who is automatically assumed to be dumb from his deformity, and then of course is actually an idiot within the doubled-down absurd internal logic Dupieux puts forth. If you like his pre-Deerskin work, this might fare about the same as those. For all the frustrating misses at humor (occasionally the fault of the actors, occasionally the script, but it's simply uneven as both the players and dialogue hit their mark on more than a handful of occasions), the film still packs enough funny bits into a brief runtime to be worth a very soft rec. The last act, which is an intentionally deflating form of ludicrous, really fails to hit its aim and spoils what little steam this minor work had left.

[domino harvey]

Keep an Eye Out (French title: Au Poste!) was okay. In a sense, it's expectedly par for the course following Quentin Dupieux's stamped reinvention of person-in-environment eccentricities, but there's something missing as he whittles down the extravagance of movement necessary to keep his films' narratives alive, and instead opts to make more-or-less a static chamber comedy. Even at a tight 70 minutes, Dupieux relies almost exclusively on conversation, and can't sustain the momentum that his fantastical twists on it objects or creatures supply, revealing how vital they are to the worlds he builds (though some minor physical deformity gags go a long way). The parts that work will trigger belly laughs though- from sharp irreverence to braindead farce- and it's no surprise that the best moments occur when we do get a surreal visual manipulation. I'm not sure if it was due to a lopsided rhythm, but after a laugh-less 15 minutes, the film peaks with the one-eyed cop who is automatically assumed to be dumb from his deformity, and then of course is actually an idiot within the doubled-down absurd internal logic Dupieux puts forth. If you like his pre-Deerskin work, this might fare about the same as those. For all the frustrating misses at humor (occasionally the fault of the actors, occasionally the script, but it's simply uneven as both the players and dialogue hit their mark on more than a handful of occasions), the film still packs enough funny bits into a brief runtime to be worth a very soft rec. The last act, which is an intentionally deflating form of ludicrous, really fails to hit its aim and spoils what little steam this minor work had left.

I caught up with Au Poste! and I agree with a lot of your criticisms even though I think what works just barely works enough to merit a little more good will than what follows here might suggest. But good lord, he really likes these pointless Bunuel homages in his finales, huh? I thought the film shows what I'm starting to suspect is true of his oeuvre overall (and which also puts me in mind of Charlie Kaufman -- not a compliment), namely that Dupieux is playing tennis without a net but also without the ability to hit a ball with a racket. He couldn't deliver a conventional narrative or script if he had a gun held to his head, probably because he's not smart enough or talented enough to do so (possibly both). And so his insecurity means he obfuscates his inadequacies with several layers of ironic detachment and totes rando moments to distract from his real deficiencies. I thought the set up for this (innocent murder suspect inadvertently incriminates himself in another murder-- while under interrogation at the police headquarters) was actually pretty amusing and could be a great tight chamber piece if it was played straight or in the spirit of something like Garde à vue. The idea of flashbacks (another well QD loves returning to) that are interactive and malleable with the present is also an idea, albeit less focused and basically nonsense. And I don't find the notion of a pair of interrogative cops being unfathomably idiotic very funny or original, but sure, that's also an idea. Now shake all three up and top it off with a nonsensical, IDGAF middle finger to the audience that is this 63 minute long film's last ten minutes and you have something that is much, much less than the sum of its parts. Three of the four films I've seen from him are just half-baked "What if"s thrown together and tied up before an audience gets too restless to notice what's behind the curtain. Le daim feels more and more like a lucky break where his tics and bad habits worked well in concordance with the final product's aims

[therewillbeblus]

I think I’ve seen all of his features (aside from the other 2022 release we’re waiting for) and only really like two. Le daim is his most intelligent film, and while I know you hated Mandibles, it works for me precisely because I think QD is essentially admitting your theories have merit, and so he constructs a wandering Dumb and Dumber road movie around the silliest and laziest absurd device one could think of- or(/and), the kind that his principals in that film would think of. It feels incredibly self-referential and succeeds on those relaxed, confessional terms

[therewillbeblus]

Smoking Causes Coughing: Dupieux's shtick has about a coin-toss' odds at clicking with or alienating me based on where he goes from his concepts, but contrary to the dull Incredible But True, I thought this was great. There's some connection between the success of his work and the rigidity with which Dupieux approaches his greenlighting pitch, in that they often falter when he chooses to milk his skit's central idea dry rather than ascend (or abandon) the conceit as a ruse to get to the real meat of broader human behavior observations. This not only fits in the latter category but reflexively subverts its own purpose for existing right along with its targets.

Any amusement in the concept of the Tobacco Force is short-lived, because the film is far more interested in satirizing superhero culture, effectively utilizing 90s C-budget Power Rangers aesthetics to serve its point, and general awkwardness in group dynamics, eventually extended to the audience themselves. It's a movie so self-conscious of how bloated and uninteresting superhero movies are that it banishes the heroes from action to a banal vacation, only to divert any narrative strands into superfluous episodic 'scary stories', which are just more excuses to meditate on antisocial dissonance. There are like five minutes of a superhero movie in this one compared to three-plus hours in Marvel, and it goes out of its way to demonstrate how even this is too fucking much, still petering out at barely over an hour like the rest of Dupieux's work.

The underdeveloped non-characters' lack of development is itself lampooned, mostly with Jean-Pascal Zadi's excluded Mercury and Anaïs Demoustier's Nicotine having love problems that make such little sense that the movie doesn't care about detailing her tribulations or finishing any single arc that's started. One could make a case for how each of these big-name cast members is diluted to unidimensional dust of a self-referentially blatant disinterest in the material. But Dupieux's lampshading his way to the finish line with absurd intrusions doesn't just deride today's most popular movies. It reduces any perceived value in the art form into loose, juvenile farce - where the audience's sincere goal of finding emotional investment in surrogate characters or higher purpose is mocked in a way that mirrors the pathetic hope for social cohesion in real life as well as the intra-film plot.

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Though they kinda find some kind of compromised version of that when they give up and just start chain smoking at the end in silence!

Not all the detours triumph- the last one starts off as a promising comedy-of-manners centered around a mortal crisis, only to pivot to a surreal macabre gag that's not funny, but the film realizes that and ends it in media res (just like it does with every element produced in the script) to go back to the gang of bored and boring superheroes. The ping-pong effect of darting back and forth from dumb to dumber would be fruitless if it wasn't a) often funny, and b) operating in service of a greater motive. So yeah, this is yet another silly Dupieux movie, but it's also secretly constructed around a deeper internal logic that's some kind of brilliant. I wonder what Charlie Kaufman thinks of this film. It would make a great double-feature with Adaptation.

[domino harvey]

Smoking Causes Coughing

I am faaaaaar less charitable about this one than you were. For all of Dupieux‘s tiresome wackiness, there was no part of this entire thing that ever really surprised me or provoked me or whatever else the intended response to something this pointless is. Your reading is noble, but I just don’t care about anything here. The first five minutes of the Dora Tillier segment were kind of interesting before it predictably turned into a slasher movie (and he’s already done this right turn too in a much better film) instead of exploring anything with curiosity within its one idea, but that’s the extent of my positivity. Someone save France’s best actors from continuing to let Dupieux do whatever he wants with them, please. Does Dupieux start planning his movies now by just figuring out what hideous hairstyle he’s giving Anais Demoustier this time?

[therewillbeblus]

Someone save France’s best actors from continuing to let Dupieux do whatever he wants with them, please. Does Dupieux start planning his movies now by just figuring out what hideous hairstyle he’s giving Anais Demoustier this time?

Even if the central conceit is to subvert the utility of these heroes, performers, the art form, etc. (which I think is pretty clear to some degree simply by how underwritten and forcibly elided these narratives, conversations, and subplots are), it is strange that these top dogs would sign onto such a film. If they're in on the joke, they're essentially making fun of their own jobs -the levels of which they worked hard at achieving, and I imagine is something they believe in- and passing up stronger roles that would be more challenging or meaningful to play and provide opportunities to further their careers. If they're not in on the joke, I imagine that they either didn't read the script and just jumped at the opportunity to work with Dupieux. Maybe his sets are fun and lax, or maybe it's just an easy paycheck. Either way, I hear you. I appreciate what I believe Dupieux is artfully striving for, and while he doesn't need France's best actors, it certainly helps add a reflexive layer to feed that spirit. But as for everyone else involved... it's a headscratcher

[therewillbeblus]

Dupieux’s Yannick, a stripped-down, oddly “contained” movie for him, is only deceptively so - as its central conceit is essentially a heckler ranting for an hour. And since the key idea seems to be to represent all facets of what I imagine Film Twitter is like (but could really just be ‘the internet’, though the specificity on an art-consumer’s narcissistic coup feels a bit more targeted), these oblivious contradictions just follow a disorganized path of illogic until we peter out - the chamber theatre setting a mirage of sorts (in a sense, this is fittingly Dupieux’s version of a chamber theatre piece). And again, I enjoy how self-aware Dupieux is of what he does, which typically allows me to justify its conscious, sometimes deliberate shortcomings, even if I understand why others wouldn’t. In this case, I think the idea worked for maybe its first half (even if the back half had a few great moments from Blanche Gardin) and self-reflexively raising one’s artistic eyebrows has already been done successfully for Dupieux in a few very creative ways, so here, to just use it as a simple surface-level jab at Film Twitter’s inanity and superfluousness, feels superfluous too. Though maybe that’s the joke this time around - ‘why go deeper when I’m critiquing the lack of depth of my subject?’

[Mr Sausage]

Tho’ I don’t know whether this is deliberate or coincidence, Yannick has the exact same central conceit as a Jacobean comedy titled The Knight of the Burning Pestle. There, a couple of audience members become bored with the play they (we) are watching and hijack the production to make it more in line with their interests, with some sly manipulation from the cast in turn. It’s partly a satire on the notoriously disruptive Jacobean audiences, who at this time were also seated on the sides of the stage itself and would do things like trip the actors with their canes. But it also satirizes much else besides, including other literature like chivalric romances and the city comedies that had become so popular in the early 17th century. (The title is also a VD joke).

Again, I don’t know if the film took any direct inspiration from the play (I don’t think the French are all that interested in English renaissance drama for a start), but it might be fruitful to compare the two anyway.

[therewillbeblus]

But it also satirizes much else besides, including other literature like chivalric romances and the city comedies that had become so popular in the early 17th century. (The title is also a VD joke).

This certainly fits, as even if Yannick is the clear-idiot here, his impulsively juvenile commentaries on people's habits do satirize the pathetic nature of our inside jokes and private choices (like, of course a random man's computer is going to revolve around sex, even in its basic functions)

[Red Screamer]

Le deuxième acte (Quentin Dupieux, 2024)
I enjoyed Dupieux's last film Daaaaaalí! for its old-fashioned silliness and its extreme joke repetition, reaching a shamelessness approaching Tashlin levels (though not in inspiration). Le deuxième acte, meanwhile, is the definition of running on fumes. It's two and a half desperate grabs at novelty in search of a film, with each idea only brought 20% past the starting line. The main idea is a meta-film that plays like meta-theater, with no interventions by director, cameraman, or crew, so the only distinction between the film and the film-within-a-film is occasional light music. This gives the actors a little more rope than they typically get in films of this type and with such a cast, why not? Unfortunately, those scenes resort to, and keep resorting to, that standby of improvisation and aimless realism: circular arguments. I saw reviews mention that the the film has long takes, but they're not all that: walk-and-talks without much progression or visual purpose. By the time the film switches ideas,

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(with the twist that this film is directed by AI, which is why it has the ghostly no-director, no-crew feel) it has already been out of steam for a while and the next turns of the script (the characters who we thought were homophobes are actually a sentimental gay couple; what's behind the scenes begins to mirror the film they're making) only get cheaper as the endings are stacked one of top of the other.

I don't think Dupieux is as bad of a director as his detractors might say. Daaaaaalí! had some well-constructed jokes and I liked the last shot of this film:

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a long shot of the camera tracking back, retracing its path from the movie's 4 mirrored walk-and-talks (another theatrical device), but with the camera pointed down at the ground—meaning that it’s shooting its own tracks while it’s riding them. We watch the tracks rush by for minutes on end, an image of complete navel-gazing nullity, and the best joke in the film.

But whatever modest talent QD might have, it's not much apparent in a cranked-out auteursploitation half-effort like this.

As a side note, I will say that I'm surprised we don't yet have an American director turning out movies under the low budget/fast shoot/stars/multiple films a year Dupieux/Hong method. It definitely has its advantages.

[therewillbeblus]

As a side note, I will say that I'm surprised we don't yet have an American director turning out movies under the low budget/fast shoot/stars/multiple films a year Dupieux/Hong method. It definitely has its advantages.

Soderbergh fits the bill

[Red Screamer]

That's true! Slipped my mind. His films are a little more glossy than the duct-taped quality Dupieux can have.

[domino harvey]

I enjoyed Dupieux's last film Daaaaaalí! for its old-fashioned silliness and its extreme joke repetition, reaching a shamelessness approaching Tashlin levels (though not in inspiration).

Well, sad to say I saw no Tashlin whatsoever in Daaaaaalí!, which I found to be his worst film yet, and one of the most miserable film watching experiences of my life. 77 minutes sounds great until you realize you're going to be elbowed in the ribs that whole time by someone obnoxiously prodding, "Get it?"

It is clearer than ever that Dupieux is a total fraud, forever cowed by the shadows of artists which he will never cast himself. This film continues his unfortunate streak of mewing "Notice me, senpai" with the Bunuel references, except now they are essentially the central focus of the film. The tired overarching non-joke joke of the same character being played by multiple actors without comment (and Dupieux, knowing nothing, kills the "joke" by casting a full handful of actors for the role, forgoing a chance to actually make an amusing gag for an audience that knows French cinema by solely using the famously similar looking Baer and Lellouche and leaving it at that-- though Marmai ends up being the only Dali here who is actually amusing, which is probably why he's only in this for two minutes) is bad enough, but when a gardener and a priest sit down to dinner to share a dream with the artist, it took everything in my power to not just shut this off. Whoever kept cutting the checks for this production would have done well to instead remind Dupieux that his nesting narrative interplaying is not only old hat (Forget Bunuel, Hollywood already did something on this scale-- and made it make sense, which Dupieux could never-- with the Locket 75+ years ago) but refusing to give it any coherent or logical through-line is not "absurdist" or "surreal" in the slightest these days, just amateurish provocation more befitting a Gen Z's Tik Tok feed or Adult Swim (any ten minutes of which runs circles around this, to give you some sense of how bad Daaaaaalí! is). He doesn't even manage to give Demoustier another terrible haircut-- and yes, these are the meagre morsels I'm trying and failing to wring out of this disaster. There is nothing of value here, just a series of references to other artists haphazardly collected by someone who should have never left the recording booth (or pharmacie)

[therewillbeblus]

I generally like Dupieux more than you, domino, but you should steer clear of Le Deuxième Acte, which spends its first loooong act breaking the fourth wall over and over to comment on how dumb it is, and then goes on to demonstrate that it has zero reason to exist for the remaining time (quite literally, the script is built around this). The star-studded cast admit they don't know what they're doing here, and yet there's no high concept to convince us even remotely otherwise. I can appreciate Dupieux's shtick in its small doses when there's a central conceit that moves in some unanticipated direction to justify its silly self-reflexivity (for a chamber-piece Dupieux, check out Yannick instead - that at least pivots to some fun places), but this is utterly rudderless: My Dinner with Andre For Dummies. The core idea is actually, unambiguously and unironically, that Dupieux is a hack.

Again, I'm often forgiving and generous to Dupieux (and thought Daaaaaalí! was okay, though definitely on the weaker side of his 'efforts'), but this was one of the worst movies I've ever seen

[Red Screamer]

Don't worry everybody, there are enough worst movies we've ever seen to go around.

[domino harvey]

Ha, I was planning on doing a double feature with Le Deuxième acte but bailed after how annoyed I was by Daaaaaalí!, so I watched a middling late period Gabin crime film instead and I can’t remember the last time I was so grateful for mediocrity!