The Second Act

Le deuxième acte

Cannes Film Festival

VERDICT: Profilic French prankster Quentin Dupieux finds the funny side of cancel culture, AI and actorly vanity in this meta-comic Cannes festival curtain-raiser.

There are few certainties in any Cannes film festival program, but one pretty safe bet will be at least one new offering from French cinema’s prolific prankster supreme, Quentin Dupieux. Opening the festival’s official selection this year is The Second Act, a timely, self-aware, offbeat comedy that dials down the writer-director’s signature goofball sci-fi surrealism in favour of something a little more thoughtful and discursive. This concise four-hander shows us Dupieux more as experimental dramatist rather than live-action cartoonist, riffling on semi-serious themes beneath its emphatically playful surface.

Featuring a compact cast of French screen icons, including Léa Seydoux and Vincent Lindon, The Second Act is set to bounce directly from Cannes to domestic cinema screens this weekend. It also has Netflix backing, so could potentially reach a broader international audience via streaming than the director’s previous films, most of which stayed within the niche festival and art-house bubble. A single linear narrative, unusually coherent for Dupieux, also makes this one of his more accessible and outwardly conventional works.

The Second Act has a satisfying, almost musical symmetry. The opening section consists of two long walk-and-talk two-hander scenes, each filmed in lengthy, almost unbroken shots. The second act, which takes place inside a restaurant called The Second Act, brings the four characters together. The closing chapter sees the foursome share two more long walk-and-talk scenes, this time reshuffled into different duos.

As the story begins, suave David (Louis Garrel) is in a strained romantic relationship with intense Florence (Seydoux), but he is finding her increasingly needy and obsessive. He implores his uncouth lothario friend Willy (Dupieux regular Raphaël Quenard) to try and seduce Florence, thus taking her off his hands. As they talk, the pair stride across autumnal French countryside en route to a meeting in a rustic restaurant with Florence and her doting father Guillaume (Lindon).

Taken at face value, this set-up is simple rom-com farce. Except the actors keep going off-script, puncturing the fourth wall, calling to attention that they are in a fictional drama, albeit a mischievous kind of meta-movie in which the invisible crew never intervene, just carry on shooting regardless. As the foursome break character, the fake on-screen warmth between them dissolves into heated disagreements about the value of art, the futility of acting as a job, the poor quality of the film they are all trapped inside, and more. The overall effect is almost like watching a feature-length episode of the hit behind-the-scenes showbiz sitcom Call My Agent, except The Second Act is more artful in its artifice, peeling away multiple layers of performance, blurring the line between actors and characters, keeping the viewer guessing.

With a knowing wink at his audience, Dupieux repeatedly prods at touchy current debates around cancel culture, allowing his characters to voice anti-trans and homophobic views, only to rephrase them cautiously when they remember they are on camera. France’s belated embrace of the MeToo movement and mounting revelations about sexual harassment in the film industry, timely motifs in Cannes this year, are more button-pushing issues that the director addresses here, albeit through thick layers of irony that make it hard to discern whether he is raising sincere points or simply mocking the self-righteous posturing of image-concious, career-driven celebrities.

Late in The Second Act, a section about the cast being directed by AI programs adds an extra layer of juicy satire, while Florence’s tearful calls to her unimpressed family are real laugh-out-loud zingers. The subplot in which Guillaume boasts about being offered a role by Paul Thomas Anderson also becomes a running gag about actorly vanity and, perhaps, the overly fawning respect paid to certain US indie auteurs.

Not every joke hits the target, and not every thematic tangent is fruitfully explored, but a stellar cast and lively pacing lend comic force to even the weaker lines. Serving as his own cinematographer and editor, as ever, Dupieux rounds off The Second Act with a one-shot glide along the mile-long stretch of temporary rails used to achieve the film’s extended dolly shots. Another meta touch, but also a lyrical coda to one of the madcap French maverick’s most substantial and reflective works to date.

Director, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor: Quentin Dupieux
Cast: Léa Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel, Raphaël Quenard, Manuel Guillot
Producer: Hugo Sélignac
Production designer: Joan Le Boru
Costume designer: Justine Pearce
Production companies: Chi-Fou-Mi Productions, Arte France Cinéma
World sales: Kinology
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Out of Competition, Opening Film)
In French
82 minutes