4 out of 5

Directed by: Quentin Dupieux

‘Rubber‘ had a smile on its face, and constantly made the audience aware of it.  Heck, you couldn’t describe the movie without smirking and shrugging.  ‘Wrong‘ was also smiling, but was willing to be a little more sly about it, nodding at us with non-sequitors but not quite laying it all out like Rubber.  (And then, fitting with Quentin’s duck-and-dodge approach when it comes to establishing a theme, ‘Wrong Cops‘ happened.)  A couple years on and ‘Reality’ arrives, full of as much Dupieux-isms as that title / concept can manage, and yet, perhaps the most accessible of his projects for its easy-going presentation.  As mentioned by Simon Abrams in his Ebert review,  this is a fully confident Dupieux, still absolutely in love with experimenting with expectations and perception, but willing to let his ideas simmer in their off brew, patiently allowing the performance by his lead – Alain Chabat as Jason Tantra – to carry us around and through what, primarily, is a wanna-be filmmaker’s search for the recording of the perfect groan.  Meanwhile, a little girl named Reality finds a videotape in the stomach of a boar, and/or maybe is the star of a film by director Zog (John Glover), and/or has intersecting dreams with a man who wears a dress (Eric Wareheim), while Tantra goes about his dayjob as a cameraman for a cooking show hosted by a guy name Denis (Jon Heder) who wears a giant rat suit.  All of these characters might be dreaming of one another.  This might be a study of the creative process.  The might be a study of subjective reality.  You’ll take from it what you will, or not; whatever way, it’s a pleasant view, savoring its bouncy Oizo beat that ebbs and flows ‘neath Dupieux’s wonderfully staged and framed scenes and holding off from getting too willy-nilly weird until what resembles a climax, by which point – hopefully – you’re resigned to staying in your seat, if not enjoying yourself.

The flipside of presenting his movie in this fashion, though, is that it approaches being entirely insular; ‘Reality,’ natch, exists whether we’re watching it or not.  And lest you walk away thinking you’ve got it all figured out (again, see ‘Wrong Cops’ in Quentin’s oeuvre), Dupieux pulls a Miike and lets his film tip-toe past the finish line, just far enough to throw a wrench into potential interpretations.  This Miike method of breaking a film’s internal logic used to bother me, but in time I’ve appreciated the strength that it shows: forcing you, as a viewer, to dispatch with any easy water cooler summary you might’ve had and start anew.  As Dupieux has further solidified his role as one of my favorite filmmakers alongside Miike, I’m pleased as punch to see him fucking my shit up in a similar way.