P'tit Quinquin

Hailed by CAHIERS DU CINÉMA as the No.1 film of the year innately has a double-edged effect on any film, since this prestige not only auspiciously attracts attention from art-house frequenters, but spontaneously elicits higher expectation as well, so that fewer can break the jinx, either is Dumont's 200-minute rural tale, distributed as a four-episode mini-series originally, now arrives the theatrical version for a binge-watch.

Actually it is only my second Dumont entry after FLANDERS (2006, 5/10), years before I grow the habit of writing reviews, so I cannot recall why that film had failed to encourage me to watch more of his works. Through these years, my first response towards each Dumont's film perpetually includes some resistance, maybe it is the grimness of the nature of his subject matters, and hopefully the situation can ameliorate after this one.

LI'L QUINQUIN is the pet name of a schoolboy (Delhaye), who starts his vacation in a small seaside town, where his family runs a farm. Back to conduct an entire non-professional cast (after his collaboration with Juliette Binoche in CAMILLE CLAUDEL 1915, 2013), one unique characteristic of the film is its cast, everyone possesses their singularity in their miens or gestures, sometimes even idiosyncratic (for example, the two priests who operate the funeral ceremony, amateurishly laugh up their sleeves during the procession as if it is a reel for outtake), sometimes it feels tedious (one must endure the God-awful singing of CAUSE I KNEW not once but twice, to the extent it has successfully stuck in one's mind) but there is truly self-revealing honesty one finds charming, each character very core to its region, his identity and never try to overact apart from what they are asked to do.

Delhaye is a harelipped blond, mischievous, feisty, and boredom propels him to perambulate on his bicycle cross the picturesque terrain with his gang, and his petit amie Eve (Caron). Then a string of murders occur in some rather weird executions - dismembered bodies found inside dead cows, to the theory that a mad cow turns into carnivore and eats human bodies. While victims' number is growing, the two detectives, Captain Van der Weyden (Pruvost) and his partner Lieut. Carpentier (Jore), barely register any wisdom in solving the mystery or saving the potential suspects from being slaughtered apart from their passive routine investigation, and if you expect a thrilling whodunit, forget it, the ending can be overwhelming frustrating.

Characteristic antics again hog the main stage, Captain's uncontrollable face-tic and eyes-blinking has the ever protruding presence to achieve the curve from being bizarre, to annoying, to benumbing and finally becoming habitual thanks to the length. Carpentier erratically shows off his 2-wheels driving stunt apart from his usual bull-in-a-china-shop skill.

Dumont slyly tricks audience into the police procedural, and first-time viewers will naively think a last-minute revelation will culminate the film in a big bang! Time is ticking, after numerous detours, an overlong parade ceremony, an interlude dedicated to a tragedy of a black immigrant cannot be more topic now and among others. When the fifth victim surfaces, one's patience is running out of steam. After hinting the potential culprit, the film ends abruptly and leaves audience mumbling WTF!

The film fully embraces its idiotic characters without any tongue-in-cheek references, and in fact it more excels in as an ethnographic comedy with some sublime cinematography. But its length is the main drawback for a one-time activity, Dumont's dedication towards the rural territory earns him indulgence to make LI'L QUINQUIN such an eccentric anomaly, defies a uniform cinematic narrative but also a wayward manipulator, one should respect his effort albeit it never reach the maturity which can be sweepingly cherished by an international range of spectators.

This film is overly long and meandering, which is frustrating because too many scenes should be edited more carefully. Several scenes, like the funeral of Mme Lebleu, went on far too long. Also, there are too many unnecessary inserts into scenes. For example, in a restaurant in fourth episode, where the commandant is talking to a public official, there's a family with a disruptive son who is mentally handicapped. There is no reason for this family to be featured in this particular scene. This kind of fragmentation detracts from the already thin storyline. I don't recommend this film unless you have watched everything else and have plenty of time to waste.

This clearly wasn't my kind of movie and I only stuck with it based on a trusted reviewer's recommendation whom I would no longer completely trust if only I remembered just who that reviewer was.

This movie isn't completely unredeemable. There were moments of genuine laugh out loud comedy, but the reason you stick with the story is to see its conclusion, which either wasn't given or I was so done with the movie by the time it ended that I just didn't notice, but I have a feeling it's the former; and with how painfully slow and seemingly pointless the movie is, I wouldn't be surprised if the writer thought it was brilliant to have the story end without a conclusion because 'that's life, it's slow and there aren't always answers' but, assuming that was the intent, that's not why people see movies. Even the most out-there artistic movies still have an ending as to not lose an audience completely. Again, nothing against the people who made this movie. I clearly should've stopped 30 minutes in, but even though this movie's clearly not for me, not for most people (at one point I screamed, not in reaction to an offensive moment but successive, offensively boring ones, "this was on tv?! Who would watch this?! Well, tv is very different in other countries."), I find disturbing the seemingly unanimous critical praise. I don't trust Roger Ebert's website. Every time his site's review comes up in a movie's search, the review always seems backwards, praising terrible movies and being too critical of not-that-bad ones. He's dead, obviously. I'm saying whoever's writing in his name seems to have a very backwards view of culture, so his 4/4 rating was not at all surprising to me and his postmortem reviews carry no weight in my eyes. That being said, every other review seems to give this movie similar high praise. Were they watching the same movie? Did they really love every meandering, dialogue-free, action-free, progress-free moment? I find it very hard to believe that these reviewers would praise an equally abhorrently slow and pointless superhero movie.

And I wholeheartedly agree with another reviewer (here on imdb) who said this movie feels like it needs serious editing. It's not uncommon to hear of movies who's first cut was approaching 4 hours but was whittled down to 2.5, but I know the torturous pacing was deliberate, which makes me dislike it all the more. This movie feels like it was made to turn away people who wouldn't like or get it. Movies should be accessible. That's not to say cookie-cutter or inoffensive. I neither got nor liked Killing of a Sacred Deer and yet in a strange way that I struggle to put into words, I consider it a good movie in spite of (or perhaps because of) its going against everything I believe about filmmaking because it stuck with me. I didn't agree with how the story was told and I didn't get the larger point - the little of it I did I disagreed with - but it all felt purposeful. Maybe that's why Killing's offensiveness was magnetic whereas Quinquin's was repellent. Accessibility, at least for me, means a sense of purpose within and around the story. There was definitely (although with how slow everything else played out this seemed rushed) a smaller message or at least exploration of racism in France, but other than that I couldn't even sense a purpose out of my reach as with Killing. The only purpose I felt was, as I said above, the writer really liking to document the slowness, purposelessness, and imperfection of real life (that last one actually being a good thing, what gave the movie both uniqueness and life, but heavily weighed down by the first two). Beyond that I saw no purpose and that's what made this movie repellently different as opposed to magnetic.

...overlaid with a bumbling murder investigation, and the result is a gem of comedic filmmaking and social satire embedded in a humanistic portrayal of contemporary French peasantry. Dumont dares to portray prejudices, pettiness, and brutality of rural life without malice or ridicule. Gendarmes, Van der Weyden and Carpentier, are as funny as their counterparts, Manchin and Malfoy, were in Slack Bay, yet less the buffoons of that film than simply odd and ignorant. I grealy appreciate such honest, often tender. portrayals of common people amidst a sea of films focused on elites, bourgeouisie, and artificial characters.

Well, it's actually a TV series but I watched the whole thing in one sitting. My jaw dropped. This is not a film for the casual viewer. It is bewildering, full of unattractive people, many of of them with facial ticks, mental problems or just a plain ugliness. The themes are rich and deep, exploring so many aspects of human nature one loses count. The acting by seemingly first timers is first rate. It's reviewed mostly as a comedy but it's not laugh out loud kind of funny. Instead it's a satire on human nature, making one gulp with the truth of the telling. Take heed, don't watch this is you don't like squirming a little bit when faced with the naked truth. But if you're willing to invest yourself in this film, your time will not be for naught. It's not life changing but does make you think and most of all, feel.