Dupieux’s Wrong in competition at Sundance

by Fabien Lemercier

19/01/2012 - "A crazy visionary of enormous talent who delightfully refuses to play by the rules”: the programme for the Sundance Film Festival, which opens today, is full of extravagant praise for French director Quentin Dupieux, who will unveil Wrong [trailer] (pictured) on Saturday in Park City, in competition in the World Dramatic section. This is the filmmaker’s third feature after the outlandish and fascinating Steak [trailer] (2007) and Rubber [trailer] (unveiled as a special screening in Cannes Critics’ Week 2010). Shot in Los Angeles, the feature stars Jack Plotnick, Eric Judor, Alexis Dziena, Steve Little and William Fichtner. Dupieux also did the cinematography, editing and part of the film score (under the name of Mr. Oizo).

Scripted by Dupieux, the film centres on Dolph Springer who gets up one morning and realises he has lost the love of his life: his dog Paul. In his quest to find him, Dolph radically transforms the lives of those he encounters: a nymphomaniac pizza deliverer, a neighbour addicted to jogging, a French-Mexican opportunist gardener and a strange animal detective. But on his odyssey in search of his dog, Dolph could end up losing something even more essential: his own mind.

Produced by Grégory Bernard for Realitism Films, Wrong received co-production support from Arte France Cinéma and an advance on receipts from the National Film and Moving Image Centre (CNC). UFO Distribution will launch the film in French theatres in June and international sales are being handled by Kinology.

A total of 11 titles will battle it out in Sundance’s World Dramatic competition, including five other 100% European features: L [trailer] by Greece’s Babis Makridis, Four Suns by the Czech Republic’s Bohdan Sláma, Madrid 1987 [trailer] by Spain’s David Trueba, Brit production My Brother the Devil [trailer] by Sally El Hosaini and Teddy Bear [trailer] by Denmark’s Mads Matthiesen.

Seven other French (co-)productions are taking part in the festival: Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in New York [trailer] (see news - sales: Rezo) in the Premieres section; Valérie Donzelli’s Declaration of War [trailer] (sales: Wild Bunch); Nadine Labaki’s Where Do We Go Now? [trailer] (Pathé International); and the co-productions Corpo Celeste [trailer, film focus] by Italy’s Alice Rohrwacher and This Must Be The Place [trailer, film focus] by fellow Italian director Paolo Sorrentino in the Spotlight line-up, Denis Côté’s French/Canadian co-production Bestiaire in News Frontier Fiction and directorial duo Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi’s 5 Broken Cameras (co-production with Israel and Palestine) in the World Documentary line-up.

(Translated from French)