Quentin Dupieux returns with The Second Act, a playfully dour satire on the film industry that sees the French absurdist delve further into the apocalyptic mood and gallows humor of his recent Yannick. The Cannes opener stars some of the biggest names in the French film world as heightened versions of themselves: actors working on a film within the film (and perhaps a film within that), a conceit that allows them to break the fourth wall, basically winking at the audience conspiratorially while taking passing shots at themselves and some of the hands that feed them. It’s all in good fun, of course. It’s also quite inside baseball––not that that mattered at the premiere, though you do have to wonder how it might resonate going forward.
Selected to raise the curtain on the world’s most prestigious film festival, The Second Act rolled moments after the opening ceremony closed,...
Selected to raise the curtain on the world’s most prestigious film festival, The Second Act rolled moments after the opening ceremony closed,...
- 5/15/2024
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
Cannes film festival
With help from an A-list cast, Dupieux brings his customary mischief to an amiable tale of imposture and role play
Cannes can always do worse than choose a comedy for its opening gala, and the festival is off to an amiable, entertaining start. Quentin Dupieux brings the wackiness onstream with this cheerfully mischievous, unrepentantly facetious fourth-wall-badgering sketch. It’s a sprightly meta gag, a movie about a movie, or perhaps a movie about a movie about a movie – or perhaps just a movie, full stop, whose point is to claim that reality as we experience it inside and outside the cinema is unitary despite the levels of imposture and role-play we bring to it. It is all just one unbroken skein of experience like the endless dolly-track (the temporary rail that lets the camera move smoothly) that Dupieux finally shows us.
There are plenty of laugh lines,...
With help from an A-list cast, Dupieux brings his customary mischief to an amiable tale of imposture and role play
Cannes can always do worse than choose a comedy for its opening gala, and the festival is off to an amiable, entertaining start. Quentin Dupieux brings the wackiness onstream with this cheerfully mischievous, unrepentantly facetious fourth-wall-badgering sketch. It’s a sprightly meta gag, a movie about a movie, or perhaps a movie about a movie about a movie – or perhaps just a movie, full stop, whose point is to claim that reality as we experience it inside and outside the cinema is unitary despite the levels of imposture and role-play we bring to it. It is all just one unbroken skein of experience like the endless dolly-track (the temporary rail that lets the camera move smoothly) that Dupieux finally shows us.
There are plenty of laugh lines,...
- 5/14/2024
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Something has subtly shifted in Quentin Dupieux’s perspective, leaving the one-man-band of French cinema a rather different auteur than the anti-comedy punk that nearly stumbled onto the festival stage so many years ago. Chalk it up to maturity or to an impressive professional rise — reaching new highs this year with the opening slot at the Cannes Film Festival — but the director’s tone has softened and his targets have shifted, even as his working methods (and working ethic) remain set-in-stone.
Like a distant Gallic cousin to Wes Anderson and Hong Sang-soo (now there are two names you rarely see together), Dupieux has connected a distinctive voice into a well-honed system built for productivity, allowing him to write-direct-shoot-edit-and-score a new film every year. And sometimes, he finds time for two.
Within the past twelve months, he’s brought films “Yannick” and “Daaaaaalí!” to Locarno and Venice, and now steps into...
Like a distant Gallic cousin to Wes Anderson and Hong Sang-soo (now there are two names you rarely see together), Dupieux has connected a distinctive voice into a well-honed system built for productivity, allowing him to write-direct-shoot-edit-and-score a new film every year. And sometimes, he finds time for two.
Within the past twelve months, he’s brought films “Yannick” and “Daaaaaalí!” to Locarno and Venice, and now steps into...
- 5/14/2024
- by Ben Croll
- Indiewire
Et voilà, The Second Act, a bubbly apéritif to open this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and the latest bit of mischief from Quentin Dupieux, the Loki of the French cinematic universe. Dupieux turns out a film roughly once a year, featuring protagonists ranging from a rogue rubber tire cruising the highway for victims to a giant fly captured by a couple of petty crooks who try to turn it into a sideshow attraction. Each wacky new romp brings new fans into the tent and, on the evidence of his recent cast lists, entices more big-name actors to run away and join his circus.
So roll up here to see Bond girl Léa Seydoux, the baggy-eyed veteran Vincent Lindon and the usually smoldering Louis Garrel along with a troupe of faces familiar to Dupieux’s audience. The three of them play actors shooting what appears to be an especially banal rom-com.
So roll up here to see Bond girl Léa Seydoux, the baggy-eyed veteran Vincent Lindon and the usually smoldering Louis Garrel along with a troupe of faces familiar to Dupieux’s audience. The three of them play actors shooting what appears to be an especially banal rom-com.
- 5/14/2024
- by Stephanie Bunbury
- Deadline Film + TV
In France, the concept of irony is referred to as “deuxième degré” (second degree), where the “premier degré” is the literal or surface meaning, which can be twisted as audiences read an entirely different, often contrary meaning into the material. But the game doesn’t necessarily stop there. There is also “troisième degré,” “quatrième degré” and so on, as deep as you want to go.
For absurdist trickster Quentin Dupieux (whose films “Deerskin” and “Rubber” have found a cult following), “The Second Act” presents a frivolous fun-house mirror, in which actors Léa Seydoux, Louis Garrel, Vincent Lindon and Raphaël Quenard play actors playing actors in a pointless romantic comedy. They all know they’re making a bad movie, and one by one, they keep interrupting the shoot to air their personal grievances. But that’s only the beginning in a slender meta-textual doodle selected to kick off the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
For absurdist trickster Quentin Dupieux (whose films “Deerskin” and “Rubber” have found a cult following), “The Second Act” presents a frivolous fun-house mirror, in which actors Léa Seydoux, Louis Garrel, Vincent Lindon and Raphaël Quenard play actors playing actors in a pointless romantic comedy. They all know they’re making a bad movie, and one by one, they keep interrupting the shoot to air their personal grievances. But that’s only the beginning in a slender meta-textual doodle selected to kick off the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
- 5/14/2024
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
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