Snowstorm on both our houses – Weekend – Kommersant
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A killer tire, a giant fly with shoplifting ambitions, a teddy bear masterfully mixing records, ants in Leah Drucker’s circulatory system, an electric penis in Benoît Magimel’s pants, a videotape in a boar’s stomach, finally, a buckskin jacket dictating to Jean Dujardin evil will – all these are the creatures of Quentin Dupieux, who retrained from a club DJ into an engineer Ptiburdukov from the cinema. Dupyeux cuts out his films like a miniature outhouse – in order to bring national identity down there – to the laughter that is unanimously stuck in the throats of bourgeois compatriots, because nothing funny actually happens on the screen. His new film “Unbelievable, but true” has just been released in Russian cinemas. Unbelievable, but it is a fact.
Quentin Dupyeux is 48 years old, has a deliberately untidy, rather impressive beard, foppish retro-flavored outfits that his wife picks up, a permanent costume designer for all his films, a musical past, a cinematic present, and he does not like to answer questions about the future. The future is only for adults who believe in cause and effect relationships, in logic. The future is given to those who exist only if they constantly think. It seems that France, with its cult of Carthusianism, for Dupyeux, despite his very Gallic name, fashionable in the era of the Carolingians, is not at all a homeland, but a place of temporary residence. Actually, Dupyeu does not hide the fact that fate threw him into the Fifth Republic by mistake. The space through which the heroes of his “meaningless” paintings wander aimlessly always looks like anything but France, for example, the American frontier or the Martian wastelands. Part of the lack of patriotism can be explained by the fact that in the eighties, when Dupyeux was a teenager, France did not reign supreme in the hearts and minds of a new generation, since it could offer the world – apart from Camembert – socialism: both close and far, it was noticeably losing to Reaganomics. But the reason is not really madeleine cookies, to which Dupier preferred Snickers. This absurd singer has purely ethical disagreements with France – all his work is about how important it is to be frivolous, and to answer any pourquoi: no reason, no reason, just like that.
They say that the most prim and snobbish country in the world is Great Britain, located across the strait from France, the eternal antagonist, over which it is customary to laugh down: for example, the French still call menstruation “red uniforms”, otherwise England for a Parisian is a country that is not justified in any way high cost and complete sedation of taste. However, neighboring Belgium and Germany are traditionally victims of unkind French humor. France is accustomed to laughing at others – and the gradations of these “others” are countless: the farther from the island of Cité or the Boulevard des Capuchins, the less freedom, equality and fraternity, the thicker the jokes uttered with the clear intention of offending. Inescapable French chauvinism, to which Dupyeux once decided to declare a “strange” war, which started with a tricky question.
What if the other one is you? What if neither the values of the Enlightenment for breakfast, nor the rooster in wine for dinner made you your own, the same as everyone else? What if everyone does not exist, and each window is a mirror, respectively, the whole world is behind the looking glass? What if oysters have the most delicious shell (“On Guard”, 2018), and people are controlled by rats (“Smoking Causes Cough”, 2022), only fools are lucky (“Mandibles”, 2020), and the path to rejuvenation does not lie through Supplements, but through the attic of your house (“Unbelievable, but true”, 2022)?
What if, following the Oberiuts, the word is considered as an object, and the object as a word, Dupyeu is interested. And then he answers: yes, nothing. What is going on in the world? Just a blizzard. Do you think? I’m just filming.
Starting in the backstage environment of independent cinema, whose paths are inscrutable, since they are interesting to a few (by the way, once his film was even produced by Sergei Selyanov), by 2022 Dupyeux reached prestigious screenings in Cannes and Venice with his “handicrafts”. Before the premieres, he is patted on the shoulder by Thierry Fremaux and Alberto Barbera, and the crowded hall rages in anticipation of another portion of excellent idiocy.
Critics believe that Dupyeux belongs to the “new unfunny” movement, along with, say, the duet Delpin – Kervern, Guillaume Nicloux or Alain Guiraudie. Each of these authors diligently ridicules the ulcers of French society, whose history has ended, and memory has deteriorated, and speaks, or rather, brings bitter absurdities from the screen, moreover, through the lips of sacred monsters like Gerard Depardieu or Michel Houellebecq: but remember, uncle, it’s not without reason … they raised prices on gas and property taxes? But Dupyeux is obviously alien to this sociology, from which in France arithmetic always follows and the foundation of the foundations is mental calculation. Of course, a vigilant cinephile will also find metaphors with allusions in him – from Shagreen Leather to Magritte – but this wink is more like a nervous tic or a broken traffic light. To stand or go is completely incomprehensible. Even Dupyeux’s conditional Americanism (considered in France the first sign of provinciality, it’s not for nothing that the most beloved president, Jacques Chirac, always contradicted the United States, and the most disliked, Nicolas Sarkozy, was nicknamed Sarco-American) also means nothing, except for one thing: the desire to shake the viewer’s confidence in history with geography. To the will of the pampas – as if the insane plot cries out. What pampas – suddenly there is a caption for a new plot twist.
The imitation of David Lynch, attributed to Dupyeux by some connoisseurs of cinematic matter, is again misleading. Yes, owls are not what they seem, especially when they are not owls, but stuffed with sawdust, as in most of the paintings by Dupyeux, who is more passionate about toys than people. Although this is not accurate.
Perhaps, strangely enough, Bruno Dumont, the author with an absolutely opposite history, is closest to Dupyeux in the rural landscape of French cinema – a philosophical diploma obliges. But then again, it seems that Dupyeux and Dumont agree on the main thing: the absurdity is total, there is no way out, any sign with a similar inscription is a lie. But in Dumont this deceit hides death, because the best way out is through and through. In Dupyeux, behind the “exit” sign, the door is usually found not to oblivion, but to a new film set, which the Creator, most likely, did not honor with his presence.
The “strange” war declared by Dupyeux is first of all strange in that it seems to have no purpose. Wars are usually started in order to reshape reality. Dupyeux recasts reality. What for? Then, that the result will not change from the rearrangement of the terms, but the attitude towards the result is completely. Stubbornness and absurdity will grind everything. Giant flies and old tires started small and got smaller – what if the French tried to take their cue from them? And other people too?
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