The second act, the best film by Quentin Dupieux since at the post (Critique)
Léa Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel and Raphaël Quenard opened the last Cannes festival. They return this evening to Canal+.
A stitch at the place, a stitch upside down. This is how Quentin Dupieux knitted his new comedy who therefore has the honors to open Cannes, where he had already presented Smoking Excluding competition two years ago. A stitch at the place: a “classic” story with four main characters. A stitch upside down: behind the scenes of its shooting and the exchanges of the actors between the catches (or, sometimes, even coming to interrupt them). The story opens on two long successive exchanges, presenting the characters and the situation. We follow David (Louis Garrel) who explains to his friend Willy (Raphaël Quenard) that a young woman set her sights on him. Although lovely, she does not attract her and David would therefore like to push her into Willy’s arms. We then find the young woman in question, Florence (Léa Seydoux) in discussion with her father (Vincent Lindon) to whom she will present this David with whom she is in love.
Do you find it dramatically inept and damn cutest? The performers of this film too. And it is precisely in the way in which they will express their states of souls in the face of the scenario, and more generally to talk about their profession and the air of time (the risk of finding themselves cancel at the slightest bad buzz, the movement # Metoo, the first effects of artificial intelligence …) that The second act takes off. Because Quentin Dupieux slips more than ever in the footsteps of his master Bertrand Blier, which we think very much (especially in Waltzers or Actors).
Did Dupieux deserve to open the 2024 Cannes edition ball? For us who have little tasted his latest films, the answer would be rather … affirmative! Admittedly, we find here the impotence of the filmmaker to put an end to his films or his inability to dig the imagined concept. Certainly also, what is told about the vanity or self -centeredness of the actors or on the Culture Cancel and the #MeToo movement is only a succession of clichés that could be heard in the local PMU. And yet, The second act appears as the most hilarious and successful film of its author since At the post! First of all because he does not try to build a social discourse at the Yannick. Then because he seems to assume more than ever the cynicism and misanthropy of his cinema. And finally because he leaves a real place to his actors. For a few films, we had the impression that Dupieux has been using actors only to afford the most gleaming posters as possible. He sometimes even engaged (with their surprising consent) to a curious humiliation exercise as in Daaaaaaali! Where the idea of entrusting the same role to six different actors opened the cruel game of comparisons.
Here, they are the ones who regain power. The second act Even has something “the sprinkler sprinkled” (probably with his consent). Léa Seydoux, Vincent Lindon and Louis Garrel, the three actors he runs for the first time, are clearly in charge. In the mouths of other actors, this material could have sounded react. Here it becomes an irresistible comedy jewel. The genius of the self -deprecation of Vincent Lindon (of which certain anger would be heard that he has been able to express in the “real” life), the comic screw of Louis Garrel already at work in Innocent And the insane freedom of play of Léa Seydoux (for her first true foray into the genre) do wonder. Beside them, Raphaël Quenard does not have to be ashamed. Alas he fights against what appears as a casting error. For the past year, over its promo appearances (the famous suitcase at César at Daily…), He created a real alternative character. And the gap required by The second act Between the “real” and the film therefore works less with him than with the rest of the trio. Unlike them, he is unable to deport with fluidity and spontaneity in the situations he has to play.
It would obviously be unfair to see in the success of the Second act that the mere fact of his actors. Quentin Dupieux has also been able to create the conditions for this success (writing situations and dialogues with a cord, rapid filming which obliges other reflexes, remarkable casting of second roles including the brilliant manual guillot by appearing server…). But what works for us (if dubious in front of his latest films) is the exposure of his false casualness, of a cinema that takes itself seriously unlike the absolute coolness that he believes to get out. You could see in the filmmaker’s decision to refuse to promote for this most snobbone film. What if it was actually the lucid? The recognition, beautiful player, of the victory by KO of his actors!
Trailer:
Vincent Lindon, Bloody Heart: A Stacked Confession Document (Critics)
