FULL PHIL
From Rubber to Full Phil: Quentin Dupieux’s four American films
Before becoming one of the most prolific — and most unpredictable — French filmmakers of his generation, Quentin Dupieux made a detour to the United States, which shaped the beginnings of his wacky, cobbled-together world. To celebrate the screening of Full Phil, his latest feature film to hit Hollywood (starring Kristen Stewart and Woody Harrelson) presented in Midnight Screenings, we take a look back at four made-in-USA oddities.
FILMOGRAPHY
Rubber
In the beginning, there was a tire. In 2010, Rubber came out as an unidentified film object: a story about a telepathic tire called Robert that explodes heads in the California desert. Dupieux injects his fascination with circular narratives, stupefied characters and dialogues that seem to be written after three all-nighters. Simple and effective, the technique gradually instills true terror for this very mundane object through brilliant direction and intoxicating music, which today, is still the trademark of Quentin Dupieux / Mr. Oizo.
Wrong
In 2012, Quentin Dupieux released what is probably his most melancholic American film. A man looks for his dog that has disappeared in crazy Los Angeles where it rains inside offices and where canine gurus kidnap animals to teach their owners how to love. The absurd is not only funny: it becomes existential. For Dupieux, people are always chasing something — a tire, a dog, a videotape, a dream — without really knowing why.
Wrong Cops
In Wrong Cops, the filmmaker indulges his penchant for chaos even more with crooked policemen who sell drugs, pester passers-by and compose techno between screwups. It features a cast of familiar faces from American independent cinema, from Mark Burnham to Eric Wareheim.
Full Phil
Twelve years after Réalité (Reality), starring Alain Chabat and Jonathan Lambert in a mise en abyme labyrinth in Los Angeles, Full Phil inversely follows two Americans in Paris. Kristen Stewart and Woody Harrelson play a father and a daughter traveling in the French capital who try in vain to repair their strained relationship. The tension builds because of a kitsch horror film from the 1950s, and especially a (very) meddling hotel employee (Charlotte Le Bon) to the point of blowing up. Literally.
Somewhere between Creature from the Black Lagoon and La Grande Bouffe (The Big Feast)…
