Direction: Quentin Dupieux
Country: France
Daaaaaali! is a low-boil absurdist comedy written and directed by French auteur Quentin Dupieux, yet it falls short of the engaging flair seen in his previous films like Smoking Causes Coughing (2022) and Yannick (2023). The plot follows French journalist Judith Rochant (Anaïs Demoustier), who meets several times with the extremely self-absorbed Spanish painter Salvador Dali - portrayed here by five different actors—Gilles Lellouche, Édouard Baer, Jonathan Cohen, Pio Marmaï, and Didier Flamand.
Dupieux’s narrative, with its fluctuating timelines and loosely woven structure, aims for surreal, absurdist satire but often misses the mark. Despite its vibrant eccentricities, the film struggles to deliver substantial humor or thematic coherence, resulting in a narrative that feels both superficial and exhaustingly repetitive. While there are sporadic laughs, the film bogs down in long stretches of banality and redundancies. Daaaaaali! is as fake and annoying as its title. The cast is great, the film is not.
