Au poste !

A police station, a suspect interrogated for hours and hours by a nasty inspector..., the scene has been shown over and over in hundreds of crime movies. One could go as far as to consider the thing as a sub genre in itself, its most masterful illustration being Claude Miller's classic "Garde à vue" (Under Suspicion). No one indeed has forgotten tough inspector Lino Ventura psychologically torturing an artful Michel Serrault over a night's time. Well, there is no denying that "Au poste" (Keep an Eye Out) adds to a long long list but the good surprise is that it does it in its own, singular way. One can even affirm that such a "police interrogation movie" has never been seen before! Not so surprising if you take into account the fact that Dupieux has never once made what could be called a "normal" movie, let alone told the type of story that lazily unfurls between a beginning and an end, featuring stereotyped characters with predictable reactions. Such a conversion to stale conventions would in fact have constituted a total disappointment from a man who dared (and managed) to make a film around a... tyre killer ("Rubber") or else about a director who has 48 hours to find the best... groan of pain in film history ("Reality")! Well if conventions and clichés there are, they are here only to be challenged, mocked and demolished. And although one may in a way say that this is Dupieux's "most normal" work of all, you are sure to find a lot of oddities sticking out from the rigid frame of the police interrogation genre: dreams, flash forwards encased in flashbacks and others I will refrain from detailing not to kill the surprise effect. What you'd better not do is mistake "Keep an Eye Out" for a "normal" movie. If you do so, you are likely to be taken aback and reject the whole thing. On the contrary, il you consider it as a reflection on a coded genre, you are on the right track to enjoyment. For, if you look closely, you will find that Quentin Dupieux's last opus works on no fewer than three levels, which is for those who perceive it a threefold source of pleasure:

• a plain crime story which, despite being crossed by whiffs of irrationality, remains basically believable. The situation itself, the story as well as the characters, minus their eccentricities, are indeed quite realistic. Moreover, the dialogues are well written, funny and uttered with talent by two masters of comedy, Benoît Poelvoorde (the bad-ass inspector) and Grégoire Ludig (the helpless suspect), both more sober than they usually are.
• a satire challenging the clichés and set pieces of the sub genre already mentioned: the charmless interior of the police station; the worn out, a bit sadistic interrogator and his dubious jokes ; the suspect maintaining his innocence without being able to prove it, the cigarettes, sandwiches, colleagues dropping in and out, ... It is all here, but in a slightly offbeat, farcical way.
• a commentary on the theatricality of such "in camera" dramas. Dupieux shrewdly plays on the fact that as soon as a murder is committed and suspects are interrogated, each of the protagonists seems to play a role written in advance and is at a loss as to how to extricate themselves from having to live out that role.

To make a long story short, you will find "Keep an Eye Out" either an exciting or a senseless movie, depending on whether you play the game or not. I wish you to be in the second case.

Definitely a fan of Quentin's ever since I saw Rubber. But I don't know French, and my eyes are getting old and hard to see subtitles now. And that's the BIGGEST problem with this movie, is that the majority takes place in this very bright police office. Much of the white subtitles are washed out by light, white paper on desks, white shirts. VERY hard for me to keep up with and understand whatever was going on. If there were slightly yellow or greyed subtitles, or placed on the ratio bars with a slight change to aspect ratio - or dare I say a 'English dub' version, I think this movie would be a lot better enjoyed and appreciated. As it stands now for us anglophones, it's more a mysterious mystery than a twisted comedy.

I'm not familiar with Quentin's Dupieux work, but i'm most definitly going to correct that ! It is burlesque as one would hope, the work of the DOP is great and really imersive. The casting is perfect, all in all a great achievement.

Director Quentin Dupreux's "Keep An Eye Out" is familiar territory from his other films, so I understand. I've only seen two-"Rubber," which I hated, and "Wrong," which I liked, but it had its flaws. But I do see the resemblance, as they are all weird and unpredictable. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. In the case of this film, I loved it...but ironically it was the twist at the end which was, I suppose, meant to explain the craziness of what we'd just seen but ruined it for me overall.

It's really difficult to synopsize this thing, because it's just so nuts. But basically, a man walks outside his building to buy bug spray and finds a dead guy. He calls the police and a detective interrogates him late at night in the police station. The man explains his story, all the while going back and forth in time having conversations with people who aren't there or who are dead. The man is certain he's innocent of the crime but his scattered state of mind even makes him question himself.

The acting is very good and I laughed frequently at the absurdity of what was happening and enjoyed the creativity. At only 85 minutes, it clipped along at a brisk pace and I was never bored. But it almost feels as if they got to a point where they just didn't know how to tie the ends together and end it. To some it may be brilliant or clever, but to me it was a disappointing cop out. Perhaps if the scene had wrapped quickly, but it went on too long, way past where we've already said, "No way!"

But, up until the last few minutes, I really liked this film, so I give it a 7.

There are plenty of filmmakers who ply their trade in the weird and surreal, but nobody does it to quite the extent, with as much of a personal style, as Quentin Dupieux. No one else but his collaborators have the same sensibilities of wry, dry, somewhat dark, oddball humor. Even more to the point, I'm hard-pressed to name anyone else who likes to play so cheerfully with boundaries of "reality" within their features, discarding any specific notion of a concrete universe or setting and allowing lines to blur between far-flung perspectives just for the heck of it so they can all bleed together. At that, 'Keep an eye out' - or 'Au poste!' as the French title would have it - is relatively grounded and ordinary as far as Dupieux's oeuvre goes; it's only rather gradually that the wilder side of the storytelling creeps in, and this otherwise deigns to pretend it's a straightforward crime drama. But even at its most "ordinary" the movie is still joyfully offbeat as a common narrative scenario (police interrogating a suspect), and mundane nothings (the interviewee's described activities) are drawn out, focused upon, and woven together. Though it may not be as immediately and outwardly grabbing as some of his other works, make no mistake that when all is said and done there's no questioning that this is kith and kin with all that the man does, and I could scarcely be more delighted.

As Dupieux again assumes control over most aspects of the production - writer, director, photographer, and editor - he can shape the resulting film to his will and vision; maybe this helps to explain why everything in his body of work has such a unified feel about it. Here the method is comparatively restrained as we're chiefly greeted with a visual presentation that is gleaned directly from earnest fare of the 70s: hair, makeup, costume design, sets, music, and not least the warm hues of the image and the softness of the cinematography. Only very smoothly and casually are the idiosyncratic tendencies we know and love teased out in the storytelling, while the cast plays it straight all the while, and as they are one can't help but be enchanted. It's not that 'Keep an eye out' is as dazzlingly creative or captures the imagination as completely as, say, 'Rubber,' 'Deerskin,' 'Smoking causes coughing,' or 'Réalité,' but in its more gently underhanded tack this title nevertheless revels just as much in the same frivolities and frivolousness. One might reasonably argue that since this is less plainly peculiar, it could even be a fair point of entry to Dupieux for those who don't want to dive headfirst into his twisted mind. No matter how you slice it, however, this remains another superb, highly entertaining step in the filmmaker's cinematic journey.

Everything looks and sounds terrific here, and as among the stars Benoît Poelvoorde and Grégoire Ludig do most of the heavy-lifting, they especially are to be commended for so heartily embracing the spirit of the piece. It remains true, though, that Dupieux's keen wit and inventive ideas of storytelling are the primary draw for all his flicks, and this is no different. His tremendously fun screenplay lays out the path; his guidance as director ensures that no foot strays from that path of cheerfully, nonchalantly, but definitively defying norms and boundaries of fiction. When all is said and done the movie is simply a blast - we should expect no less - and anyone who at all appreciates what Dupieux does will enjoy themselves just as much in these 73 minutes. What he does won't appeal to all comers, but if you're open to all the wide, wacky possibilities that the medium has to offer, 'Keep an eye out' is low-key brilliant and a gem that's not to be missed!