Daaaaaalí!

This is my new favorite autobiographical format. For a persona as big and other worldly as Salvadore Dali, no one is better than Quentin Dupieux to relay it. Known for his surrealist film making and very special style, I really was intrigued to see how Quentin Dupieux would fare with an autobiography, especially that of a grand artist like Dali. This movie is very Dali if one might say so: all over the place, highly stylish but with a sure sense of purpose and artistic expression. Multiple actors interpret the eponymous character, actors of different styles ranging from the physical, the tragic to the comedic, a real star studded cast: Gilles Lellouche, Pio marmai, Jonathan Cohen et Edouard Baer. Each single one of them adding nuance and style while staying faithful to the countless live references of Dali's interviews. This is by no means a discovery of Salvadore Dali nor a proper autobiographical film. It is however a celebration of the personna: highly mystical and impossibly entertaining as was the artist. The film is centered around a fictional interview of Dali that never had a chance to materialize, sometimes because of circumstance but mostly due to Dali's eccentricities. This fictional thread is the only anchor to reality in the film, wandering between the corners of the surrealist artists' mind, memories and paintings, an expression of his approach and his art. Quentin Dupieux is on a hot roll after Yannick, and he has been for a while. A wonderful directorial mind that found its style and genre. This movie is the manifestation of how important the medium is to the art: Dali's life could never be resumed in a book or a film, it is a retelling of a unique artistic expression, one that Dupieux has successfully captured through his unique style and ravishing lens without any need for a solid plot or a conventional storytelling.

Dupieux connects to his underlying influence Bunuel through Dali. We find here of course the classic figure of the dream within the dream within the dream etc., as in the excellent 'Reality' by the same Dupieux.

Everything, like the best Bunuel, remains light and playful, thanks to the actors (extraordinary Romain Duris in particular) and the dialogues. A Dali's line in the film: "Painting represents an infinitesimally small part of Dali's personality. I consider that I make paintings that are quite mediocre, but which still allow me to express a little piece of Dali." Dupieux would perhaps say the same thing about his cinema...

Beyond the lightness and the play on dreams, we can find a vision fascinated by the madness of the artist's life, that of Dali here, and its obsession with keeping the pot boiling, constructing each moment of life like a monumental drama. Another line of dialogue: Judith: "Do you have a minute to talk? I'm not disturbing you too much?" Dali: "So, you know, artists of my stature are always absolutely disturbed by completely 'normals' people."

A young journalist (Anais Demoustler: The Count of Monte Cristo) wants to do an interview and a documentary, meeting the iconic artist on several occasions, played by five actors (Edouard Baer, Jonathan Cohen, Gilles Lellouche, Pio Marmai, Didier Flamand .

Two authors of the irrational, Dali and Quentin Dupieux, come together in this delirious and intelligent portrait of the master of surrealism, full of imagination, fantasy, and creative freedom. This is not a film about Dali, but with Dali. Here, Dali multiplies himself in a peculiar reinterpretation of his figure; he is free and caricature-like, he escapes, he finds himself with his aging other self. And the simple plot focuses on a French journalist meets the iconic surrealist artist Salvador Dalí on several occasions for a documentary project that never came to be. Turning out to be a hilarious and unpredictable Dali, it is Dali in his most essential form.

The film has brief biographic remarks, and of course his wife Gala appears in short scenes while he is painting, but no his friends Federíco Garcia Lorca and Luís Buñuel, in fact Quentin didn't want to make a proper biopic of the painter, as he felt it would make no sense.

There are some Dalí paintings brought to life. So 3 famous Dalí paintings are re-enacted in the film as tableaux vivants: "Necrophilic Fountain Flowing from a Grand Piano" (1932), "The Average Fine and Invisible Harp" (1932), and the anachronistic "Dali from the Back Painting Gala from the Back Eternalized by Six Virtual Corneas Provisionally Reflected in Six Real Mirrors" (1972 - 1973).

In this regard, director Quentin Dupieux explains: "Dalí's greatest masterpiece according to Dupieux was his extravagant personality; with this film, I tried to imagine a dialogue between cinema and image. I don't have Dali's genius, so, in all modesty, the film is an attempt to pay him the craziest and most free homage possible¨.

This absurd motion picture was mediocrely directed by Quentin Dupieux . He has directed varios outlandish films as Incredible But True (2022). And Smoking causes coughing (2022) premiered at the midnight section of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. After Quentin has made some bizarre, offbeat films, getting some french hits. He has directed: Le Daim or Deerskin (United States, English title) (2010), Au poste (2018), Mandibules (2020), Yannick (2023), and its most succesful film was Rubber (2010). Rating: 5.5/10. Only advisable for fans of strange and surreal films.

French, unique and clever movie.

Excellent acting performances across, much in thanks to careful directing.

The movie requires no pre-knowledge about Dali. If you've seen at least one painting, you'll notice the paintings don't seem to fall far from the artist.

Cleverly designed plot, many unexpected and witty twists - a biopic where boring chronologic is replaced by humour. The portrayal of Dali is very enjoyable, every pronounciation seems a carefully thought out way to showcase his excentric (to quote Dali) particuliarities and in some sense also decay towards the latter stages of life.

A very good film, seen at the Göteborg film festival.

I have already criticized Quentin Dupieux's films quite a bit, although I am always curious, every time I have the opportunity to see a new one.

He is an original filmmaker, that's the least that can be said about him. But the truth is that originality did not always mean quality, throughout his career. I've seen several Dupieux films that, however original they were, made no sense. Absurd arguments that, if they were sometimes amusing, were because they had so little common sense.

I think that, for the first time, at least in the films I've seen by Dupieux, his eccentricity married, almost perfectly, with a character and a script that were as eccentric, or even more so, than him.

Salvador Dalí was a phenomenon, whose fame, egocentrism, and eccentricity far exceeded his undeniable talent. Therefore, if there is a theme that fits perfectly into Dupieux's cinematic language, it is surrealism. And Dalí, being the most megalomaniac and brilliant representative of the genre (as much as this disgusted Breton and his followers), seems like the perfect character for a Dupieux film. In it, reality surpasses fiction.

Here the absurd makes perfect sense. The caricature of Dalí, simultaneously in various phases of his life, is funny, pertinent and completely plausible. And the plot feels like something out of one of his films with Bunuel or Ray, or from the many multidisciplinary experiments he has undertaken since the sixties.

It's not a masterpiece of cinema, but it's certainly the best and most interesting Dupieux film I've seen to date.