Georges, 44 years old, and his jacket, 100% deerskin, have grand plans in director Quentin Dupieux’s latest cinematic oddity, destined for cult status.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2019
Deerskin 2019
Le daim
France’s enigmatic Quentin Dupieux, aka Mr Oizo, whose breakout hit Rubber was about a homicidal car tyre, makes films unlike anyone else in the world. Deerskin, channelling cinema’s rich history of obsessive loners, is no exception.
French megastar Jean Dujardin plays Georges, a handsome greying man who purchases a long-fringed deerskin jacket – and quickly becomes obsessed with the ‘killer style’ it projects. Not your run-of-the-mill existential midlife crisis flick, all bets are off when Georges decides all other jackets must be destroyed – and his intimate conversations with the deerskin only fuel his rage and paranoia.
It gets weirder: Georges uses a camera to film himself, transforming his obsession into a meta-take on auteur theory. And when he meets Denise (Adèle Haenel), whose hobby is re-editing the likes of Pulp Fiction, he convinces her to help him produce his magnum opus.
Dupieux is a director with a laser-focused vision and an ungodly commitment to the conceit, no matter how batshit cuckoo it may be. Crafting a first-person hallucinatory vortex of madness and masculinity with the skill of a surgeon, his latest, at a blistering 76 minutes, is one hell of a ride. — AT