Don't miss out on Dupieux's "Daaaaaalí!"

by Cláudio Alves

Earlier this year, for the Cannes at Home opener, I explored the filmography of one Quentin Dupieux, from his earliest shorts to the stage-bound satire of Yannick. At the time, only two of the French director's films were excluded from consideration since, sadly, they were unavailable. The Second Act marked the start of festivities at the Croisette while Daaaaaalí! was still making the rounds in more minor festivals before international distribution. Well, some months have passed, and the latter flick has enjoyed a limited run in American theaters and is now coming to VOD. It's as good an opportunity as any to reflect on its idiosyncratic director. And trust that if you're a Dupieux devotee, you won't want to miss Daaaaaalí!...

Ever since Dupieux jumped from music-making to film, he has been labeled a Surrealist by critics worldwide. Both the man's American genre experiments and later French provocations dwell on absurdities and the impossible, but calling them works of Surrealism feels like a misnomer. In my previous piece on Dupieux, I argued he was more aptly described as a Dadaist, making his cinema into an odd 21st-century variation of the post-war movement. His stories and style's irrationality are sharpened to a point, ready to pierce convention and gore the good customs of polite society. The destructiveness is the point. 

And so, rather than an expression of the oneiric, the films are cannonballs of nonsense fired directly at the audience's faces. Still, the constant comparisons to the art of the unconscious must have awakened some interest in him, if it wasn't there already. Such speculations are interesting but they are also limiting, too embroiled in trying to untie the motivations of the artist. Why not consider the creation rather than the creator? Though, when talking about Daaaaaalí!, that might be a betrayal of the film's approach. You see, this is a pseudo biopic of the great Surrealist that is uniquely uninterested in his historical masterworks. Then again, it's not interested in the man either.

Rather, Dupieux's work suggests a fascination with the idea of Salvador Dalí, even if just as a collection of iconographic signifiers that, when put through his camera, end up meaning less together than they did apart. There's the moustache, exaggerated into a carnivalesque facsimile of the artist's famous facial adornment. There's the celebrity, the reverence others show toward him. There are dreams, told and retold in vicious spirals that deepen into a bottomless void. There are even some paintings. Not all are Dalí's, and one of them is presented in a parodic staging that suggests his lunatic dream landscapes were captured from life.

That's one of the film's best jokes, which is saying a lot since, among Dupieux's recent fare, Daaaaaalí! might be the most hilarious, unencumbered by the rancor and cynicism that has spread through such texts as the aforementioned Yannick or Incredible But True. One other lark lies in the titular man, that agglomeration of symbols, sound and fury. You see, he's not a single person but a multitude, played by six actors across scenes that stubbornly repeat, giving the impression you're watching the visual manifestation of a scratched record and getting stuck in the screeched redundancy. Escaping it is like trying to walk knee-deep in molasses. 

If you're in the right mood, it's hilarious and quite reminiscent of late-career Buñuel at his most impish. Indeed, as much as Daaaaaalí! is about the titular multimedia artist, Dupieux's cinematic idioms often come off as quotations from the director who collaborated with that other Spaniard in Un Chien Andalou and L'Age d´Ôr. But to get the tone right, the best comparisons are some Mexican and French nightmares like The Exterminating Angel and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. So much so that the Frenchman has borrowed the latter film's endless middle class dinner party and updated it for his own comedic purposes. Every time you realize you haven't yet escaped the damned meal, the only option is to laugh.

But what's the story, you might ask. Well, story is the least of the film's concerns past the point of suggesting a structure. Still, one could say that Daaaaaalí! follows a young journalist trying to get an interview with the artist, only to be stuck in loops of endless waiting for what seems like decades on end – not that she ever ages, though he does, not always in the natural order. Time seems to bend around the Beckettian expectation, and reality is just as malleable. It makes for a maddening madcap movie that provides much mirth and has merits to spare. In truth, it might be judged as Dupieux's most derivative effort, but there's value in seeing an artist try to expand his horizons. Even if it is through the citation of others or the twisting of their style into something altogether new.

You can find Daaaaaalí! on Amazon and Spectrum On Demand.