“Even at its measly 80-minute runtime the joke at some point runs its course, but Le deuxième acte is good for a few hearty belly laughs and some acting fireworks from its small cast.”
Reality is reality. At least that’s what Florence says. Or was it Florence, the actress playing Florence? Or was it Léa Seydoux all along?
This is the kind of absurd layering you get when you either let AI write and direct your movie (or your movie-within-a-movie), or when you let French absurdist Quentin Dupieux do it. In a film that is meta about its meta references, Le deuxième acte (The Second Act) has very little story but very big concepts that build and build until Dupieux almost drives them into the ground. His films are definitely an acquired taste, and even at its measly 80-minute runtime the joke at some point runs its course, but Le deuxième acte is good for a few hearty belly laughs and some acting fireworks from its small cast.
A clearly distraught Stephane (Manuel Guillot) opens up his restaurant, Le deuxième acte. Why he is so nervous is not clear, and will not be for a long time, because we switch to a long conversation between David (Louis Garrel) and Willy (Raphaël Quenard). David wants Willy to take this girl Florence off his hands. She’s beautiful, he assures his friend, who is not convinced. Is Florence perhaps a trans man, or a cripple?
“You can’t say that!” David cries out, breaking the fourth wall. As they continue their conversation, it becomes clear that we are watching actors playing the characters in the conversation, and this theme continues as we switch to Florence (Léa Seydoux) and her father (Vincent Lindon). Florence has convinced her dad to come along on a date with David, because she wants him to meet the man she believes to be the one. Halfway through their conversation Guillaume, the father, starts complaining about his lines, and about Florence’s acting. After he gets a phone call from his agent telling him Paul Thomas Anderson wants him in his new film, he can barely keep it together and continue the scene.
This kind of back and forth between the fake reality of the movie-within-a-movie and the actual reality of the actors who can’t stand each other continues when the four of them come together in Stephane’s restaurant, and we find out the reason for his nervousness. And then Dupieux adds another layer, and any semblance of normality is broken. It is pretty easy to see what attracted the actors to Dupieux’s script, because the film is a string of long takes filled to the brim with dialogue that they can sink their teeth in. The whole philosophy of reality and fiction blending or being inverted is just a hook to hang Dupieux’s absurdity on; it is not to be taken too seriously, but fans of the director would already know that.
It is those fans that Le deuxième acte will attract, but it is unlikely Dupieux will grow his fanbase with this film. For that it is too slight and too full of itself, and the concept is better suited to a short film. But to see a cast of big name French actors chew their way through page upon page of dialogue that feels improvised but is likely tightly scripted is worth the price of admission alone. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but to see Vincent Lindon essentially play the kind of self-serious character he always plays, only to thwart that completely in the film’s final fifteen minutes, is a great joy. Le deuxième acte is not a film to see for its poignancy or a tight story, but it’s a highly enjoyable romp and a perfect opening to the festival.
(c) Image copyright: Chi-Fou-Mi / Arte France Cinéma