Daaaaaali! : Quentin Dupieux has a sense of the gag [critique]

The filmmaker multiplies the incarnations of the painter for a somewhat vain mise en abyme on the mysteries of representation enhanced by the comic genius of Jonathan Cohen and Edouard Baer.

Daaaaaali! will be offered on Canal + at the end of the weekend. This comedy of Quentin Dupieux is it worth it? Here is the review of Firstinitially published when it was released in cinemas last February. The French director has since opened the Cannes Film Festival with The Second Acthis biggest success in theaters.

Quentin Dupieux has the meaning of a gag. The efficiency of the one who opens his new film seeing an Edwardian Dali walking in an endless hotel corridor would almost be enough for our happiness. But let's continue. The self-satisfied artist is trying here to join a young journalist and will immediately leave in the other direction once warned that no camera will be there to immortalize the interview. A fun DIY mise-en-abyme then takes place around the representation and the traces it leaves on a painting, a small or large screen, a dream or even on the faces of the multiple actors who play the title role… A almost everywhere, except perhaps in the spectator's imagination.

This is a recurring problem for filmmakers who fail to offer a sensitive vision and are more concerned with the advertising aspect of their own universe. It is not insignificant that the author of Yannick summons Dali in his grotesque and caricatured form, that of this guy who in a famous ad said “foooouuu Lan-vin cho-co-lats!“Be an artist having”fear of dying from excess self-satisfaction“who will have organized his life as a long and joyful suicide.

Daaaaaali! tells a little about that, the specter of death and disappearance haunts this isolated genius incapable of being anything other than a self-centered monster (Jonathan Cohen and Edouard Baer, ​​sublime) We also hear an asshole producer (Duris ) say “Celebs love having their asses wiped“. Something that Dupieux does very well, each time summoning into his little world a bestiary of stars who come to have fun.

Trailer:

Quentin Dupieux reunites with Adèle Exarchopoulos for his next film