“the Second Act” by Quentin Dupieux, satire in the void – Libération

Critical

Article reserved for subscribers

A meta comedy where four stars comment on their own role on a shoot with superficial self-deprecation, the filmmaker’s thirteenth film, which will open the festival, pastiches the star system with cynicism.

And so here is the opening film, an appetizer for the newly arrived VIP audience or an energy bar for the angry critic who always wants to warm up and fight as soon as they set foot at the station . After Cut! by Michel Hazanavicius and Jeanne du Barry of Maïwenn, this Second Act seems to have been specially shot as one of those narcissistic-funny sketches produced as an interlude for the Caesars ceremony. The pedestal effect, obviously with a recalcitrant Dupieux who announced that he refused any interview, still makes you want to not just find it fun, cool, or hyper-smart.

In Yannick, released last summer, a disgruntled spectator interrupted the performance of a boulevard play to, with a gun in his hand, humiliate the actors, and force them to perform a creation of his own, written on the spot (but whose film will ultimately only let us hear a line or two before sending the music and CRS). The viewer doesn’t pay to be bored, he wants to be entertained. At least the filmmaker wants to believe so, who himself is fighting at full throttle against the panicky fear of dead time: “Often we wrongly believe that I want to be clever, like the kid who, to be original in drawing class, is going to paint with his shit, but that’s before

source site