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.
