Quentin Dupieux works at such a dizzying clip––”the French Hong Sangsoo,” they’re calling him somewhere, I assume––that a film of his so readily grabs our attention like A notre beau métier (To Our Beautiful Profession). But these first details sing on cast alone: a Télérama (via Ion Cinema) interview with Léa Seydoux confirms her involvement alongside Louis Garrel, Vincent Lindon, and frequent star Raphaël Quenard. Better yet that we might see it very soon, with Seydoux claiming, “Quentin offered me the film two months ago, the filming was done straight away, and we only filmed for two weeks!”
Her (translated) description details A notre beau métier in mostly coherent fashion:
“It’s a mise en abyme around actors who play in a lousy film. Actors facing their character and their lines. Each role is dual. Vincent Lindon plays an actor who plays my father. There is also Raphaël Quenard and Louis Garrel. The film is crazy. Very, very funny. It ‘shits’ the verb, if you’ll pardon the expression!”
Maybe not that last sentence, but we’ll chalk it up to translation only going so far. Seydoux, not exactly known as a comedic star, accepted the film out of admiration for Dupieux’s “humor [hiding] an increasingly social depth, through imperfect and clumsy characters,” which a doomed film production should offer in spades.
Dupieux debuted two strong features, Yannick and Daaaaaali!, last year. We also caught up with him a couple years ago at Berlinale, where he summarized his ambitions neatly: “I would love to shoot only stupid movies; it’s not a problem for me. But as a viewer, when a filmmaker starts to have their thing, then it’s boring. ‘Oh, him again. Yeah, stupid, I know.’ It becomes less and less exciting.”