This is hardly the first review of a Quentin Dupieux film to complain that the prolific cult director rarely puts more than one idea into his movies, and it’s unlikely to be the last. Like a comedy sketch stretched far, far beyond its welcome, Yannick is convinced it’s funny, and Dupieux himself states with confidence, “99% of films are boring. This one is not,” but sadly the declaration is just an empty promise.
Set in a marginal Parisian theater where a doltish working-class audience member interrupts the banal stage action and demands respect, Yannick clocks in at a super trim 66 minutes, but unlike classic pre-Code comedies of the same length, this can’t be called brisk. Finding audiences outside die-hard French fans will be a tough sell.
It’s not that Dupieux lacks a feel for absurdism, yet in so many of his films (Deerskin, Incredible But True, Smoking Causes Coughing, and others) he rarely takes it far enough, so the humor may occasionally tickle the funny bone but it lacks the intelligence or sheer delirium to carry an entire movie. This is especially true of his latest, which frustrates not only by being so slight, but also by the supercilious way he treats the working-class character, presented as a simulacrum of blue-collar boorishness. After watching Yannick, even the theater-loving Emperor Nero, whose bust is seen in the opening shot, would hesitate before trusting himself to Melpomene’s care.
Not many people are in the audience for The Cuckold, a bad play probably at the tail-end of its run which features a trio of actors uninspired by the kitchen setting and their banal lines. At some point a spectator, Yannick (Raphaël Quenard), interrupts the performers and tells them he took a whole day off from his job as a parking-lot attendant outside Paris to attend, but he’s not entertained. The three actors – Paul Rivière (Pio Marmaï), Sophie Denis (Blanche Gardin) and William Keller (Sébastien Chassagne) – try to awkwardly reason with him until finally they lose all patience and get him to leave. Relieved by their success and unable to immediately get back into character, the three ridicule the man onstage to laughing audience members until Yannick returns to the auditorium, this time brandishing a pistol.
What follows had the potential of being genuinely funny or even scathing: Yannick demands a laptop, on which he bangs out his own play which he wants the actors to perform. Yet Dupieux barely does anything with his own scenario, as if he too is already bored by the characters he’s created. Sophie urges her cowardly cohorts to grow a pair and do something, which reduces her to just a pushy woman unwilling to assume the real risks, trying to convince the gutless men to take control. At a certain point we’re left wondering whether Dupieux means to skewer the world of semi-fringe theater and the hollow routine of bourgeois play-going audiences, but no, he’s not looking to ridicule any group in particular. He’s never cruel, which is commendatory, yet neither is he much of a satirist, and given the material here, one can’t help but imagine what a touch of Pirandello’s wit and insight might have done.
Technically the film is polished and restrained, in keeping with the performances – Dupieux’s casting choices are always spot-on, and he trusts his actors to inflect the smallest elements of exaggeration into their naturalism. As usual, he’s assumed the roles of director, writer, d.p. and editor, while the expressive, post-romantic chamber music by the late Ethiopian composer Emahoy Guèbrou is both unexpected and charming.
Director: Quentin Dupieux
Screenplay: Quentin Dupieux
Cast: Raphaël Quenard, Pio Marmaï, Blanche Gardin, Sébastien Chassagne, Agnès Hurstel, Jean-Paul Solal, Laurent Nicolas, Mustapha Abourachid, Sava Lolov, Charlotte Laemmel, Franck Lebreton, Félix Bossuet, Agathe L’Huillier, Caroline Piette
Producers: Thomas Verhaeghe, Mathieu Verhaeghe, Hugo Sélignac, Quentin Dupieux
Cinematography: Quentin Dupieux
Production designer: Joan Le Boru
Costume designer: Elfie Carlier
Editing: Quentin Dupieux
Music: Emahoy Guèbrou
Sound: Guillaume Le Braz
Production companies: Atelier de Production (France), Chi-Fou-Mi Productions (France)
World sales: Kinology
Venue: Locarno (International competition)
In French
66 minutes
