A favorite for a very original French film, ”Yannick” by Quentin Dupieux, to put at the top of your cinema priority list and for fans of more “classic” cinema, another French film called “A Serious Job”.
“Yannick”, the surprise success of the French box office this summer, the new film by Quentin Dupieux, a real Stakhanovist who has a series of projects, here is already his 12th feature film. Quentin Dupieux has the art of describing wacky scenarios: a killer tire for “Rubber”, a man who falls in love with his jacket in “Le Daim” with Jean Dujardin or even “Mandibules”, the story of two morons who try to train a giant fly. Yannick is his most “classic” film, probably the most accessible if you don’t yet know his cinema, which can be described as absurd and zany. It’s a closed session that takes place in a theater. We are witnessing the performance of a mediocre boulevard play with actors who are not very invested. Until a spectator gets up and calls out to the actors, it’s the famous Yannick. At the start, Yannick is funny, striking with his offbeat lines, then he becomes more worrying when he pulls out a weapon and takes the room hostage.
Quentin Dupieux, for once, tackles a realistic register to create a climate of unease with a nice rise in tension. I highlight the phenomenal performance of the main actor who plays the famous Yannick. Raphaël Quenard, THE essential revelation of French cinema in recent months, you may have seen him in the magnificent “Chien de la Casse” or in the great successes of streaming platforms. He has, as you have heard, a very particular diction, a charisma that eats up the screen, a sincerity that touches the viewer, a look that is both distressing and terribly moving. Remember his name!
”Yannick” is a treat of a film at different levels of reading: it can be seen as a questioning of madness, it also questions us about the nature of art and the place of the spectator, without forgetting, this social gaze very relevant on a France divided between the “little people” and the elites, it is, implicitly, a clever and metaphorical look at an angry France. Yannick is a devilishly hard-hitting and effective joke about class contempt, with a nice layer of tenderness as a bonus!