Just when it looked like Quentin Dupieux had hit a creative wall, out comes Yannick, a swerve from his more surreal outings towards something a touch more political. If it’s not entirely plausible, it mostly is, and for Dupieux – the man who gave us a sentient truck tyre in Rubber and a chase comedy involving a gigantic insect in Mandibles – it’s probably as normal as it’s ever going to get.
It’s also short, which Dupieux films tend to be, this one clocking in at only 67 minutes. It was short enough that Dupieux was able to film it on the hoof while preparing for his next official movie, Daaaaaali! (about surrealist artist Salvador Dalí), and he shot it in secret so as not to alarm the backers of Daaaaaali!, who presumably thought Dupieux was quiet because he was working on their film.
It’s all shot in one space, too, which really helps when you’re trying not to draw attention to yourself. We’re inside a theatre where a run-of-the-mill French farce is playing out in lacklustre fashion to a sparse audience. Suddenly a man called Yannick jumps up in the audience, and semi-apologetically but grinning in charmingly, announces loudly to the actors that he isn’t enjoying this show at all, that he’s a nightwatchman here on his day off and has come a long way.
Yanked out of their performances, the actors are at first dumbstruck. As he continues, with no sign he’s going to sit down again, they start to respond Yannick’s complaints. Can he see the director? No, he’s not here. Do they have another play they could do? Something a bit less, you know, artsy. They explain, as if to a simpleton, that this is months of rehearsal he’s looking at. This stuff doesn’t just write itself. Big mistake.
The three actors on stage have long ago lost control of the situation. In a series of plot leaps, Dupieux takes us from single audience member sounding off to Yannick riding the mood (largely sleepy) of the audience towards a hostage situation.
The convention-bucking loudmouth who asks inconvenient questions and starts shifting opinion his way, or at least separates people from old affiliations, could be a metaphor for a populist politician, and Raphaël Quenard plays Yannick in that register – loquacious, charming but with an edge of a threat. As Yannick decides that, since no one will come up with a new play to perform, he’ll write one himself, the parallels seem more obvious. And as the audience become the actors and the actors, to an extent, become the audience in what they see as their performance space, the parallels become more explicit still.
Quenard and Dupieux have now made three films together. He was in Dupieux’s Smoking Causes Coughing (the one about nicotine-adjacent superheroes) and Mandibles, the aforementioned giant-insect comedy. Though Dupieux works fast and makes short films, he’s lucky to have found a gap in Quenard’s schedule – as I write (April 2024) Quenard has six films in post production, after having appeared in eight features and a short in 2023. He’s a talent on the rise.
Really, Yannick the movie is the decent farce that Yannick the theatregoer wanted to see, with plenty of toing and froing, sudden ridiculous developments and role-swapping going on all over the place. It’s short and sweet and it has something to say. It’s also brilliantly performed, not just by the “actors” on the stage (Pio Marmaï, Blanche Gardin and Sébastien Chassange) but also by the actors playing the audience members, who come increasingly into their own as time ticks along.
If you don’t know Dupieux, is this a good place to start? No, I’d go with Rubber. But if, like me, Dupieux’s more recent work has left you somewhat underwhelmed – Smoking Causes Coughing was a slog, and it was only 77 minutes long – then Yannick is the reassurance that he’s still got plenty going on. Now, obviously, on to Daaaaaali!
Yannick – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
I am an Amazon affiliate
© Steve Morrissey 2024
