Quentin Dupieux's Daim | Deerskin (2019)

If this is Quentin Dupieux, it must be weird, really absurd. Yes, but the weird and absurd this time mainly come from one person: Georges (Jean Dujardin, in not one of his blockbuster roles, but as a loser as in Delépine and Kervern's I Feel Good). Georges, 44 years of age, is going mad and is first seen collecting an autoroute ticket with Joe Dassin singing 'Et si tu n'existais pas' in the background. Clearly, this is a film about existentialism.

Georges's wife has left him and he's creating a new role for himself in life, buying a hugely expensive deerskin jacket with a digital camcorder thrown in free. But his wife has frozen their bank account and the only collateral he can provide his hotel with is his wedding ring. The jacket is of vital importance as Georges sees it as a god, as if talking to him, but importantly telling him that he must destroy all other jackets in existence.

At the local bar Georges makes contact with Denise (Adèle Haenel) the barmaid, who's done some basic film editing and is really interested to learn that Georges (who has at least stolen a book on the cinema) is a film-maker. As Georges starts to educate himself as a 'director', he gives or sends his cassettes to Denise to edit, she gives him more money for his film, and it seems that his crazy stories about his professional life are being believed. But Georges's films depict real situations, and Denise wants to see more blood.

So Georges provides her with more (real) blood films, taking the jackets from his victims, but Denise (apparently knowing nothing of the murders) seems absolutely convinced about this film, and as she films him in a countryside setting, the father of a young boy who's been staring at Georges, and whom Georges has wounded with a stone, shoots him dead. Denise's reaction? She puts on his jacket.

Quentin Dupieux's Mandibules | Mandibles (2020)

Grégoire Ludig (Manu in this film) and David Marsais (Jean-Gab here) are actors well known to a French-language viewer, but not to an Anglophone one, so a certain part of the humour will be lost: the duo are especially known for the Palmashow, of which the first television  programme was La Folle Histoire du Palmashow (2010), and then the first feature film was Jonathan Barré's La Folle Histoire de Max et Léon (2016). Then came Mandibules.

This is, of course, an absurd film, but much funnier than Dupieux (aka musician Mr. Oizo) has come up with before. Manu and Jean-Gab are petty, thirtysomething crooks down on their luck, Manu out of work and sleeping on the beach, Jean-Gab still living with his mother. They've known each other for a long time, as witnessed by their constant 'Check taureau' signs, which mean everything and nothing. Manu has stolen a wreck of a car which he needs in order to deliver a small suitcase to the unknown Michel Michel, for which he'll receive five hundred euros, which is no doubt a large amount for a down and out. For some unknown reason – and here, perhaps, we're reminded of the frequent 'no reason' of Rubber – Jean-Gab is co-opted into the business.

They only have a half-hour drive to complete the mission, but a fly gets in the way, and not just any fly. This is a giant fly hollering in the boot of the stolen car, but (these guys are not on their uppers for nothing) Jean-Gab hits on an idea of brilliance: they can make much more than a measly five hundred balles, they can make a thousand times more by training the fly to be a drone, rob banks while they just do nothing: putain !

There are digressions, including very briefly living in a caravan which Manu by accident sets fire to, but they run out of petrol and Cécile (India Hair) mistakes Manu for a guy she knew in the past, and hey they have a place to stay in relative luxury. The trouble is not so much that brother Serge (Roméo Elvis) thinks they're a couple of débiles (brainless low-lifes in this case), but that they disturb Agnès (Adèle Exarchopoulos).

Agnès herself is disturbed, and as a result of a skiing accident can only scream instead of talk normally, but she also seems stricken heavily by paranoia. And although the buddies pass off this paranoia with impunity, they can't get away with it all the time, and after being rumbled by accident they hit the road (after syphoning some necessary gas).

So what can a fly do after being set free from the masking tape that holds down her wings: fly away, of course, and the buddies are about to happily re-begin their lives as losers, when she appears on the bonnet with the requested bunch of bananas. That's one very successfully trained fly. So what's next?

Yeah, I loved this.

Quentin Dupieux's Rubber (2010)

Comic horror. A post-modern film within a film about the non-reality of film? A scathing comment not just on the cinematic experience but an attack on the audience itself? Maybe not.

The French Wikipédia entry for Quentin Dupieux, aka musician and DJ Mr Oizo (a pun, of course, on oiseau) states that he said 'il n'y a rien de plus beau dans l'art que de ne pas réfléchir' ('nothing is more beautiful in art than not thinking'), and the beginning bears this comment out. After Le Comptable (the 'accountant' Jack Plotnick) hands out binoculars to spectators watching the making of the film, Lieutenant Chad (Stephen Spinella) reels off a list of things in films which are done for no reason, saying by extension that this film has no meaning: just relax and enjoy the experience, which is surely what cinema – life itself? – is all about.

This film concerns a car tyre which slowly comes alive and begins to learn what's happening around it, at first falling down before it learns how to roll properly, then making its way along towards the road. The name is Robert and he discovers he can squash a plastic bottle in his way by just rolling over it, but he has to develop psycho-kinetic powers by breaking a bottle, then blows up a rabbit and a crow he doesn't like the look of before he continues to the road, his natural habitat. He makes his progress towards psychopathic killer status by blowing the head off a motorist who's had the effrontery to drive him off the road, but seems to like the looks of Sheila (Roxane Mesquida) when she takes a shower in a motel: indeed, one of the spectators wonders if they'll have sex, and the woman next to her suggests rubber Robert might get a blow job.

Slowly, the cops realise that they have a serial killer on their hands and put a dummy Sheila laden with explosives outside a door of the motel while Robert is watching – naturally – a racing match on TV. But he just blows the dummy's head off and doesn't come near the explosives, so Chad boldly just goes into the room and shoots the tyre, throwing the harmless rubber remains to the only surviving spectator: the man in the wheelchair (Wings Hauser). But Robert has reincarnated into a tricycle and – after blowing the man and his wheelchair to bits – continues his way down the road, where he picks up several tyre followers rolling on behind him.

Some comments (professional and amateur) have suggested that this would have made a decent short, that it doesn't have enough substance for a feature, and Chad (speaking for Dupieux?) tries to stop the film halfway as he says it's over and anyway it's not real. Personally I didn't find it at all tyring.

Quentin Dupieux's Steak (2007)

Steak, as might be expected of a film by Quentin Dupieux, is an insane film, and stars comedians Éric Judor et Ramzy Bedia. But this is not insane for the sake of insanity, and is in fact a satire on fashion, the world of machismo, and gang culture. Éric plays Georges, a rather unbelievably weedy school stool pigeon who's the butt of all the jokes and pranks. But when he accidentally finds a machine gun he kills three of his bullies, although his friend Blaise (played by Ramzy) takes the rap and ends in a mental hospital for seven years. Although Georges meets Blaise on his release, his life has changed immeasurably and he leaves his former friend, who arrives 'home' to find his family has left.

Blaise didn't recognise Georges as first as his head was covered in bandages: under peer pressure, he's joining the local gang the Chivers, who wear red blousons with their name emblasoned to the back, avidly drink milk as if it's a premier cru, are violently opposed to smoking, drive around in 4 x 4s, have a ritualisitic way of greeting their own kind, play an incomprehensible game which involves a large rubber dice-shaped 'ball' and intricate numbers, and pull all the girls.

Blaise tries to join in the Chivers by painfully stapling his face, although when Georges brings out the chain saw after being beaten up because of smoking, Blaise accidentally kills one of the gang and, as the two escpape they are caught by the cops. This is a comedy, but not of the same kind as Rubber, which is mixed with mild horror. Why the title Steak? I have no idea.