Director

Quentin Dupieux

France  | 2019 | 77 min | French

• Producer Thomas Verhaeghe, Mathieu Verhaeghe
• Production Company Atelier de Production, Arte France Cinéma, Nexus Factory & Umedia, Garidi Films
• Screenplay Quentin Dupieux 
• Cinematography Quentin Dupieux
• Editing Quentin Dupieux
• Sound Guillaume Le Braz, Cyril Holtz, Maria Carolina Santana Caraballo
• Cast Jean Dujardin, Adèle Haenel, Albert Delpy, Coralie Russier, Laurent Nicolas, Pierre Gommé
• Contacts

  WTfilms

  sales@wtfilms.fr

About the Film

For those who love the oddball story and the madcap comedy, Deerskin is a surrealistic cinéaste’s delight. It is directed by French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux, who has made his reputation in this off-beat field with a film about a homicidal tire—Rubber (2010)—and a mystery called Wrong (2012).

Here he tells the simple story of a man who falls in love with his suede jacket. Dupieux builds a self-contained universe of craziness around this premise, through which he explores the themes of identity and self-image. Actor Jean Dujardin, who starred in The Artist (2011), is hilariously deadpan as Georges, a big man with no background or baggage.

He is driving his car up a mountain road when he suddenly becomes dissatisfied with the way he looks in his corduroy jacket. He purchases a vintage deerskin jacket with cowboy fringe that makes him feel cool. “Don’t I have a killer style?” he asks bartender Denise (Adèle Haenel). He starts passing himself off as a filmmaker and recording things on a small digital camera, which adds a mocking, self-reflexive edge that appears in many of Dupieux’s films. He also starts talking to his jacket—and the jacket talks back (in Georges’ voice). It wants to be the only jacket in the world. And to achieve this dream, Georges will stop at nothing, not even murder.

Be prepared to enjoy every moment of the madness, but don’t forget to admire the clean scripting stripped to the bone, the cunning use of background music, and Dujardin’s unhinged self-regard that transcends rhyme and reason.

Deborah Young