Director Quentin Dupieux presented two films at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, one of which is his animated debut Le Vertige. The musician turned director has been fiddling with absurdist, often meta-fictional satires since his earliest films, and the latest is no different. The new movie follows a man increasingly convinced he’s living in a simulation. This would sound conspiratorial to most everyone except the audience, who can clearly see he’s living in a low-polygonal PlayStation game.
In Le Vertige, Alain Chabat playes Jacques, who is desperate to convince his closest friends that their life is low-key a video game. Ever-skeptical of this Matrix-style revelation, no one else seems flinched by the ethereal, inconsequential nature of their day-to-day lives. All of this elevated by the fact that this entire world is very obviously being run of a ‘90s CD-ROM, their blocky bodies looking like they naturally operate with tank controls.
Dupieux, formally known as the DJ Mr. Oizo, has been building a rather prolific run as an absurdist filmmaker. His debut film was 2010’s Rubber. Advertised as a horror movie about a murderous tire, the film rolled out against audience expectations, making elaborate jokes about the lawn chair audience waiting for this psychic car part to continue its rampage. Much of his work has followed a similar model, teasing some typical genre romp, but constantly abandoning the plot to pursue some grander farce.
Animated using Blender, Le Vertige pokes fun at the relentless pursuit of realism in computer generated imagery, especially in the shadow of AI generated imagery. It was one of the two films Dupieux ran at this year’s Cannes. The other was Full Phil, a live action comedy starring Kirsten Stewart, Woody Harrelson and the reunion of Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim. It follows a millionaire’s attempt to reestablish a connection with his daughter through a Paris vacation.
