From “Rubber” to “Wrong” to “Smoking Causes Coughing” and “The Second Act,” eccentric French auteur Quentin Dupieux is quickly becoming one of Europe’s most prolific filmmakers akin to a Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Albeit with eccentric, often fourth-wall-breaking comedies. He had two films debut at festivals in 2023, including the heckler hostage comedy “Yannick” at Locarno and the Salvador Dalí “real fake biopic” “Daaaaaalí!” out of competition at the 2024 Venice Film Festival. A movie where five actors play the surrealist icon, “Daaaaaalí!” is now making its way to U.S. theaters courtesy of Music Box Films, and IndieWire shares the exclusive trailer below.
Here’s the official synopsis: “For journalist Judith Rochant (Anaïs Demoustier), the assignment to interview renowned artist Salvador Dalí is a great career opportunity–if only he would agree to sit still and answer a single question. What begins as a 15-minute conversation blows up into a bonafide cinematographic documentary portrait, provided the world’s most enormous cameras are available to film it. As Judith’s interview is delayed, detoured, disrupted, and deranged by Dalí’s inexhaustible self-regard, the journalist finds herself becoming the subject. The legendary painter’s artistry and ego know no bounds, and ‘Daaaaaalí!’ dutifully casts no less than five actors (Edouard Baer, Jonathan Cohen, Giles Lellouche, Pio Marmaï, and Didier Flamand) as Salvador Dalí in this prismatic portrait. The prolific Quentin Dupieux’s latest comedy is an exercise in dream logic and surrealist homage, with the rug pulled out from under you again and again before you even manage to get up off the floor.”
More from IndieWire’s review out of last year’s 80th Venice Film Festival: “Dupieux’s exasperatingly titled ‘real fake biopic’ about Salvador Dalí is a dreamlike tribute to the 20th century’s two most prominent surrealists: Dalí and Luis Buñuel. Ostensibly a story about a young journalist (Anaïs Demoustier) trying to interview the eccentric painter, the film takes its dramatic structure from Buñuel’s ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,’ in which a group of hungry dinner party guests are unable to sit down and eat thanks to an endless stream of surreal diversions. Much like Buñuel’s dinner, the interview with Dalí never actually takes place — hardly a spoiler, as the film’s obvious Buñuel fetishism makes it clear from the opening frames that it’s the only possible ending.”
“DAAAAAALÍ!” opens in theaters October 4 from Music Box Films. Watch the exclusive trailer and check out the first poster below.
