Le deuxième acte

Girl loves boy, boy wants best friend to love girl, girl’s father wants out of the film he’s in, and a nervous extra finds the pressures of acting a little too much. Quentin Dupieux tests the brittle reality of cinema in this playful, meta-textual fancy.

Florence loves David. Unfortunately, the feeling’s not mutual. In fact, David, wants to hook Florence up with his friend Christian. He intends to tell her at their lunch date, but she announces that she’s bringing her father, Guillaume. As the four make their way to the restaurant, the actors playing them keep falling out of character. The actor playing Christian seems incapable of saying his lines without making some unsavoury comment about the ‘culture wars’, while the veteran playing Guillaume is despondent at the dearth of good films being made. As the crew becomes increasingly vocal off camera, it is evident that the film they’re making may not reach its conclusion. 

The schmaltzy, easy listening score accompanying the opening of the film-within-the-film announces Quentin Dupieux’s playfulness, while the characters’ journey to the restaurant, along an open road, is a clear nod to Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). However, unlike that satire of the Church and middle classes, Dupieux’s absurdist eye is trained on cinematic fictional constructs, breaking the fourth wall with the help of a cast who revel in the mischievousness of the entire enterprise.

– Ian Haydn Smith

Trailer

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