{"id":12665,"date":"2019-09-27T10:00:11","date_gmt":"2019-09-27T17:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=12665"},"modified":"2019-09-28T14:26:14","modified_gmt":"2019-09-28T21:26:14","slug":"fantastic-fest-review-deerskin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/fantastic-fest-review-deerskin\/","title":{"rendered":"Fantastic Fest Review: Deerskin<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I suppose there are multiple ways to go about having a good old-fashioned masculine midlife crisis \u2014 it just depends on your level of commitment. You know the obvious ones, of course: things like plunking down your life savings for a shiny red sports car, trading in your age-appropriate partner for a much younger model, or quitting your stable job to embark on a yearlong wellness retreat at an ashram in India. But with his delightfully unhinged new black comedy, Deerskin<\/em><\/strong>, French writer-director Quentin Dupieux makes a case for what at first seems like a far less drastic, far more reasonable option: developing a serious fixation on vintage clothing.<\/p>\n

Enter Georges (Jean Dujardin), a middle-aged guy who has just been dumped by his fed-up wife and is looking for something to fill the void. And that\u2019s when he sees it: a fringed deerskin jacket he just has to have. It calls to him, and he just has to have it, even though the price tag seems a bit absurd for something that looks like it was plucked from a costumer\u2019s rack on the set of a spaghetti Western \u2014 although for him, that\u2019s clearly part of the appeal, along with the low-quality digital video camera that\u2019s been thrown in for good measure. He\u2019s then off to the French countryside, where he checks into a small motel intent on clearing his head (and beginning a new career as a renegade filmmaker) and admiring his new purchase.<\/p>\n

The hotel\u2019s bartender, Denise (Ad\u00e8le Haenel), is intrigued by his arrival (and perhaps a bit bored), and she just so happens to have a background in film editing \u2014 or so she tells Georges, who wouldn\u2019t know any better anyway. He hires her for his \u201cupcoming project\u201d without seeing a stitch of her work, on the condition that she fronts him some money his \u201cproducers\u201d have promised to pay him once they\u2019re \u201cback from a shoot in Siberia.\u201d The truth, obviously, is that he\u2019s completely broke \u2014 his wife has frozen their joint accounts, and he spends most of his spare time sitting around in his room staring at his beloved jacket, which begins to take on a life of its own (at least in Georges\u2019 increasingly frazzled mind).<\/p>\n

Soon, he\u2019s having full-on conversations with his new jacket\/spiritual guide, and he\u2019s more than willing to take on the dark mission the jacket has laid out for him: to eliminate every other jacket in existence. He uses his \u201cjob\u201d as a \u201cfilmmaker\u201d to lure unsuspecting townspeople into throwing their jackets into the trunk of his car as part of an \u201caudition,\u201d taking more and more drastic means to ensure the destruction of his jacket\u2019s nemeses \u2014 and that\u2019s sort of the entire plot. The film revels in its own silliness and simplicity, and it\u2019s delightful to watch a handsome Academy Award\u2013winning actor spend 77 minutes fully committing to this particular brand of cartoonish lunacy. Somehow, the bloodier things get (and things do get quite bloody), the more feverishly joyful the whole thing feels.<\/p>\n

As is the case with Georges\u2019 sartorial leanings (and vintage shopping in general, I can attest as a fervent devotee), Deerskin<\/em> will hardly be to everyone\u2019s taste, but if your sense of humor tends toward the bizarre, this will really speak to you. Go ahead and try it on, revel in the \u201ckiller style,\u201d take it home, and let it sit with you. Just try not to speak back to it when anyone else is watching. \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Screened at Fantastic Fest; U.S. release TBA)<\/em><\/p>\n

Grade: B+<\/span><\/h3>\n
1 hr., 17 min.; French with subtitles; not yet rated<\/h5>\n
\n
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I suppose there are multiple ways to go about having a good old-fashioned masculine midlife crisis \u2014 it just depends […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":568,"featured_media":12666,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,1416,340],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-festivals","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}