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The second act: Quentin Dupieux warns about the state of French cinema (review)

Réalisé par : Quentin Dupieux Avec : Léa Seydoux , Louis Garrel , Vincent Lindon , Raphaël Quenard, Manuel Guillot, Françoise Gazio Genre : Film comique Sortie le 14/05/2024 Durée 01h16 0 /5 Donnez votre avis Synopsis Trouver une séance Vos avis

The second act: Quentin Dupieux warns about the state of French cinema (review)

Latest production by prolific filmmaker Quentin Dupieux, "The second act" was chosen to open the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

"Keep dreaming, it's better". This sentence pronounced by Louis Garrel à two extras could almost be that of Quentin Dupieux to the spectators who discover The second act  in cinemas. Presenté opening the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday evening, the prolific filmmaker's latest feature film is a black comedy that tackles the world of cinema and the star system. Difficult to summarize as it is so full of several successive twists, but the filmmaker plunges us behind the scenes… lackluster seventh art by following actors, who play actors, who play in a film. You follow ?

A meta film (the important thing about the film is precisely its second act) and a mise-en-abyme like Dupieux is accustomed to seeing. the spectators, which allows him to dismantle the star system and raise awareness about the state of current French cinema, whileç #39;he has become the new generation and who questions, deep down, the capacity of what does cinema have? make us dream, even today. There are therefore a lot of things in The secondème act and Quentin Dupieux leaves little downtime à its viewer to digest it. 

By superimposing the levels, and therefore the reading levels and blurring the border between cinema and reality, the director seeks to create new meanings. disconcert and plays on the viewer's intelligence on the true purpose of his film. While we believe we are in the real world bedridden, we discover that we are in a fiction, which itself is a fiction imagined by a merciless AI. , the true enemy of the cinema of tomorrow. 

The true denunciation of the film (the dangers of AI, the capacity of cinema to make people dream, its cruelty…) are then truly revealed in this "second act" precisely, after a first part which tackles the actors (their whims, their hypocrisy, their very stupidity) in a biting but artificial way, precisely. Face &agrav; Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel, Raphaël Quenard and Lea Seydoux who give it their all. joyful in delivering the scathing replies, Manuel Guillot plays a more fragile character, away from the middle, and therefore more authentic. He's the real star of the film, as he says in the mysterious trailer ;laughing at the film but already telling the story everything: "the real hero is me". Extremely satirical, scenes make one cringe and even shock (the actors of the first level multiply the transphobic, homophobic, ableist remarks under the stunned gaze of the audience). of another who does not want to be associated with ça, and an actress threatens another actor to "cancel" ;s (he tries to kiss her), but are at a loss. observe from a new angle after an hour of film, when the whole thing is revealed under all its layers and that we have, finally, discovered this second act. But while these subjects still remain very sensitive (and rightly so), these scenes remain clumsy and would have benefited from a better approach. &agrav; demonstrate clarity more immediate. As in the rest of the film, which by multiplying the subjects and points of view, can lose the viewer's point, and that's a shame. The second' th act is currently in the cinema.

Synopsis – Florence wants to introduce David, the man she is madly in love with, to her husband. his father Guillaume. But David is not attracted to her. by Florence and wishes to get rid of her by throwing her into the arms of her friend Willy. The four characters find themselves in a restaurant in the middle of nowhere.

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Teilor Stone

By Teilor Stone

Teilor Stone has been a reporter on the news desk since 2013. Before that she wrote about young adolescence and family dynamics for Styles and was the legal affairs correspondent for the Metro desk. Before joining Thesaxon , Teilor Stone worked as a staff writer at the Village Voice and a freelancer for Newsday, The Wall Street Journal, GQ and Mirabella. To get in touch, contact me through my teilor@nizhtimes.com 1-800-268-7116