The Second Act (2024)

Direction: Quentin Dupieux
Country: France

The comedic style of prolific French director Quentin Dupieux can often oscillate between the amusingly absurd and the frustratingly inconsequential. While Daaaaaali! (2023) fell short of convincing, The Second Act emerges as a surprising, satirical triumph. With its playful mise en abyme and elaborate form, the film delves into the world of cinema, where actors revolt against a script they deem mediocre. To make everything more insane, they are being directed by artificial intelligence, which also wrote the script.

The stellar and assured cast—Léa Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel, Raphaël Quenard, and Manuel Guillot—are in complete control, and the story gains perspective and weight in their capable hands. The real fun of the film lies in its blurring of boundaries between representation and reality, leaving viewers guessing as the layers of fiction intertwine and collapse. Even lacking full dramatic meaning, it sneaks up on you. Yet, you should doubt everything you see and hear. 

Unapologetically, Dupieux skewers the egos and absurdities of the film industry, tackling issues such as homophobia, technology's encroachment on creativity, and the tension of strained relationships—all with his trademark irreverent humor. The Second Act demands to be seen, preferably with an audience that doesn't know what it's in for. It’s the kind of cool and kooky narrative that leaves you walking out of the theater feeling like you've seen something special, even if you can't quite figure out what that ‘special’ was. 

The film owes everything to its gifted actors coping with the provocative ideas of a script that becomes a therapeutic trust exercise of their own. This ferocious, dichotomous masquerade is never boring.

Daaaaaali! (2024)

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.

Smoking Causes Coughing (2023)

Direction: Quentin Dupieux
Country: France 

Whether you love or hate his movies, Quentin Dupieux is a singular filmmaker who is not afraid to experiment. His new fantastical and absurdist film, Smoking Causes Coughing, is satirical in a way that is both disarming and perplexing. This gory, outlandish superhero comedy with some big laughs is centered on the Tobacco Force, the coolest Avengers unit comprised of Nicotine (Anaïs Demoustier), Mercury (Jean-Pascal Zadi), Methanol (Vincent Lacoste), Ammonia (Oulaya Amara), and Benzene (Gilles Lellouche). Although saviors of humanity, they struggle with emotional problems themselves and egotistic instincts. But one thing bonds them tightly: the love for grim, scary stories.

The five vigilantes led by Chief Didier (Alain Chabat), literally an old rat with drooling problems, is put to a test when Lizardin (Benoit Poelvoorde), the Emperor of Evil, decides to annihilate the Earth.

More of a sketch film willing to entertain adult audiences with the spirit of TV comedies of the ‘70s than anything else, Smoking Causes Coughing bears a horde of pop curiosities and caustic yet valid social commentary about saving our planet and the dangers of compromising technology (the presence of advanced robots - one suicidal and one retarded - is not by chance). To spice things up, he interlaces the droll mockery with disgustingly bloody scenes. Certain jokes have a forced quality, but there's something gleefully self-aware about them. 

Dupieux’s antics are provocative, psychedelic and unapologetic. His film, so well titled, so funny, so pathetic and so bizarre, is also so memorable for all that.