Le Daim
Trailer
English Title
Deerskin
Year
2019
Director
Quentin Dupieux
Synopsis
Georges, 44 years old, and his jacket, 100% deerskin, have a plan.
Honours/Awards
- Sélection À La Quinzaine Des Réalisateurs—Cannes 2019
Adèle’s role
Denise, waitress and aspiring film editor.
Excerpts from reviews
“Also excellent is Adèle Haenel in the role of the main secondary character who, in the outcome of the film, gives all its meaning to the story.”
https://www.lapresse.ca/cinema/critiques/201910/31/01-5247798-le-daim-le-blouson-infernal-.php
“Passing himself off as a filmmaker, Georges cons a local bartender, Denise (a splendid Adèle Haenel), into lending him money to finish his scriptless project.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/movies/deerskin-review.html
“The bartender’s name is Denise, and she’s played by Adèle Haenel, the captivating star of the Dardenne brothers’ The Unknown Girl, who here creates a portrait of a cool moony young woman whose trusting nature is based on her having spent too much time in the provinces.”
https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/deerskin-review-jean-dujardin-1203215532/
“At the local watering hole, Georges meets wide-eyed bartender Denise (Adele Hanele [sic], embracing deadpan material in the wake of serious dramas like BPM and The Unknown Girl), who’s transfixed by Georges’ peculiar bravado.”
https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/deerskin-review-jean-dujardin-cannes-2019-1202141274/
Comments
Le Daim was the opening film of the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes 2019 and it was one of three films that Adèle featured in that were at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. Tomorrow we will view Portrait de la Jeune Fille en Feu, but I have not been able to find out what is happening with the release of Les Héros ne Meurent Jamais, as it was scheduled for theatre release on May 6, 2020, but we all know that 2020 is a very strange year! I have not been able to ascertain its new release date, but will add notes here once it is available.
This is another comedy, but a much darker one than yesterday’s En Liberté! The DVD for this film only arrived during our film festival, so I have only watched it twice so far. Adèle’s character is wonderfully accepting of George’s crazy premise and goes along with his madness. In a small role in the film ('la voisine', the neighbour; the woman in the next door hotel room) is Coralie Russier, who was in BPM with Adèle, but Adèle and Coralie do not share a scene in this film.
Adèle only accepted this role after it was rewritten to give a better character for a woman:
Interview: Adèle Haenel (my bolding)
“And what was the style with Dupieux?
With Dupieux it was different because he is a well-known filmmaker. He is famous, people worship him.
A cult filmmaker.
He’s got a kingdom, in a way, so it was different. But I saw some of his movies, and I loved Reality, and that’s also a question of what is life, what’s not life… and I love this thing. So I said yes because I love his way of making things upside-down all of the time. But I complained about the poor feminine characters in his movies because he always made films with characters that are shitty women. So I said I don’t want to do a movie like that, but if you call me, it means that you want something else. Because I am very political in France and a no-nonsense feminist. Obviously I’m not going to do “the girl in love with the man who’s crazy”—it’s not going to happen. So what about changing it? So we changed it.
So you rewrote the character? [Haenel plays an unemployed film editor moonlighting as a bartender in a small-town inn where the Dujardin character is staying. He, in turn, is posing as a filmmaker while obsessively acquiring deerskin clothing. It’s a Dupieux plot.]
Before we started shooting, I was talking with my friend about what I should do with the character, how I should make her be a collaborator—a collaborator in the craziness of the movie. She’s very normal, and craziness comes from a normality. I also changed the focus, because she was focused on him and he was focused on the [deerskin] jacket. I said, let’s focus her on the jacket as well, just to see—and it changed and became a buddy movie a bit. So with Quentin it was a bit more like fighting, like we were not agreeing, but still we are collaborators and that was great. I am happy that we met. I hope he is going to change after that.
You mean, his films will change, you think?
In the future, yeah, I think so. Because I was confronting him on things. I must say, I think he’s a very poetical man.
Did you like doing comedy again?
Yeah, I love it, I love comedy.”
https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/cannes-interview-adele-haenel/
Interview with Jean Dujardin (George)
"And how did you work with Adèle Haenel?
She is a wild animal. She is not going to be sociable because of propriety. She does not care. She is in a logic of projection of her character, and she expects the same from the other. So, we made the beef by saying "go ahead, play", but each in the solitude of his character."
[Note: Jean Dujardin was also in Polanski's J'Accuse.]
Random Trivia
Random Trivia
- Quentin Dupiex thanks all the deer of the world ('tous les daims du monde') in the film’s credits.
- As well as being screenwriter and director, Quentin Dupiex is also the cinematographer and editor of the film.
Can this woman get any cuter?[The answer is clearly: 'YES!'. She grows more beautiful as she matures...]
Product placement is part of this film...it's in the credits
 |
| Denise in the first of three jackets she wears in the film |
 |
| At Cannes 2019 |
Interview with Jean Dujardin, Quentin Dupieux et Adèle Haenel
Rewatch Notes
This is only my third viewing of the film. (The DVD arrived only a week or so ago; I have viewed most of the other films in this Film Festival many more times.) Jean Dujardin does a great job playing Georges, a delusional middle aged man. He is so besotted with himself in his too-short suede fringed jacket. He is in love with it and with his image of himself in the jacket, and believes the world is also in love with it. Adèle's character of Denise, waitress and aspiring film editor, is part of the delusions that are fundamental to this absurdist comedy—that the jacket is awesome ("totally sick") and that a great film is being created. This film reinforced my learning how to swear in French (my French lessons skip that part, so my cinema education needs to fill the gap).
The film brought to mind a movie that saw eons ago entitled Max Mon Amour. I just checked it out and the reviews are scathing, but I remember enjoying it and I recall people laughing at different points in the film, because the total absurdity of the premise just bubbled up at different times for different people. There were no punch lines, but the premise is so far fetched and ridiculous that it just made it funny... In it the husband discovers that his wife is having an affair. He then finds out that it is with a chimpanzee. He is upset about the affair, but no more than if it was with another person. For the film to be funny, you need to buy into the absurdity of the whole situation, not to judge it. The same thing goes with Le Daim.
This film also demonstrates the 'Chekov's gun' principle, but not as literally as we saw in Aprè le Sud, in what seems like ages ago.
Adèle is (as always) great in this role—one favourite scene is when she give Georges a gift. Denise is bouncing with excitement and anticipation of how much Georges will like it. She is super-cute here. Watch also for Denise in the mirror in this scene—a nice filming angle gets both of them in the shot. My other favourite scene is when she lays down the law of how things will be from now on. Presumably, this scene is part of of the changes that Adèle needed to happen to be part of the film—not a girl who falls in love with a delusional middle-aged man, but a woman with her own passions (& delusions) and who has the means (even if stolen...) and ideas to take over the project. The final scene shows Denise taking over both the project and the delusion. The passing comment about Georges' film being in the style of a faux documentary may be a nod toward Adèle's third film shot that year, Les Heros ne Meurant Jamais, which is in the form of a fake documentary.
This is not the strongest of Adèle's films of this year (of course, Portrait de la Jeune Fille en Feu gets that title), but this is an interesting and bizarre film. It, again, demonstrates to us that Adèle is happy to keep exploring genres and extending herself in her craft and career. What is most interesting and exciting to me is that by only taking part in the film if it was rewritten so that the female character wasn't "shitty", Adèle is asserting the power that she now has in French auteur cinema. Most young actors, or indeed most people new in any career, generally need to take what they are offered. Adèle has made wise choices through her career, most likely partly in collaboration with Céline Sciamma, and now that she has established herself as the premiere actress of her generation she can not just accept the roles she wants and reject the rest, but she can also shape the films and influence filmmakers. I am sure that she will use this power wisely.
How many Film do you watch more than one time? Do you always watch the whole film or sometimes just special scenes?
ReplyDeleteI don't watch that many films multiple times, just the ones that really touch me & those that I want to get a deeper understanding of. For most films I see, I would view once once at the cinema and then have tv re-watch if I liked it.
ReplyDeleteAfter viewing 'Portrait de la Jeune Fille en Feu' this pattern was changed.I have watched it many (many) times, because it rewards re-watches, as well as the emotional ride you are taken on. I want to understand and appreciate the multiplicity of layers that have been designed into the film—nothing is accidental.
I'm watching Adèle & Céline's films many times because they are my guides to French auteur cinema.