Dupieux’s outstanding single-location film works as a sardonic meta-filmic commentary on art and performance as an audience member with a gun takes a theatre show hostage for producing ‘boring work’.
Review #2,838
Dir. Quentin Dupieux
2023 | France | Comedy, Drama | 67 min | 1.37:1 | French
Not rated – likely to be NC16 for some coarse language
Cast: Raphael Quenard, Pio Marmai, Blanche Gardin
Plot: On a rare night off, parking attendant Yannick goes to the theater to catch a production of the comedy The Cuckold. Dissatisfied by the boring performance, Yannick hijacks the show: he takes the theater hostage and demands to become the playwright.
Awards: Won Europa Cinemas Label for Best European Film (Locarno)
International Sales: Kinology
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Art & Audience; Artistic Hijack; Acting & Performance
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Normal
Audience Type: Slightly Arthouse
Viewed: MUBI
Spoilers: No
I’ve heard of Quentin Dupieux for years but haven’t yet seen any film of his. The prolific French filmmaker has been regarded by critics to be one of the most original voices of the last decade or so, often dabbling in absurdism and satire, often in the genre of comedy.
Yannick, which won an award at Locarno last year, takes the construct of a single-location film and turns it inside out.
In the middle of a theatre performance attended by a handful of people, one audience member (whose name informs the movie title) decides to call out the trio of actors for such a boring show, and then with a gun, takes everyone in the hall hostage.
Attempting to create something more entertaining, he types out a script for the actors to perform. But as you can imagine, this ‘artistic’ hijack situation doesn’t go down well with anyone on either side of the stage as it delays late into the night.
“You’re adding to my problems, not making me forget mine.”
Dupieux takes this meta-filmic idea to its logical extreme, imbued with a strong sense of sardonicism as his short (just over an hour long) but efficient treatise on the ‘authenticity’ and ‘accessibility’ of art and performance becomes a tantalising deconstruction of all that we hold dear about the sanctity of the stage.
As the saying goes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Through Yannick, we feel the tension brewing, not just from the physical and psychological conditions of the hostage situation, but also the triggering nature of subjectivity.
While art can open up endless possibilities and teach us to welcome a myriad of perspectives, who gets to define or dictate what ‘art’ is—the artist or the audience?
Roland Barthes once wrote about ‘The Death of the Author’, challenging the notion that the author holds final sway over his or her text’s meaning, when in fact it ought to be the reader who holds that power.
Well, Yannick seems to have put theory into practice… and then have his practice theorised by Dupieux in this outstanding film.
Grade: A-
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 