05/09/2012 - The cult filmmaker behind Steak and Rubber is back with a new surrealist film in English produced by Realitism Films

An awkward atmosphere, anxious characters who do not really understand each other, reality with a twist of bizarre. In Wrong, a film today released in 50 French cinemas by UFO Distribution after its world premiere at Sundance earlier this year, Quentin Dupieux continues in the same original vein that catapulted him to the status of cult filmmaker with Steak and Rubber [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (Cannes Critics' Week in 2010).

Jack Plotnick, Eric Judor, Alexis Dziena, Steve Little, and William Fichtner feature in the cast of this film shot in Los Angeles, for which Dupieux wrote the screenplay, was director of photography, editor, and also composed some of the music (under the name Mr. Oizo). The screenplay recounts a man's misadventures and strange encounters while looking for the lost love of his life: his dog.

"I refuse to be a filmmaker who directs his audience," says the director of a film that alternates between worrying drama and off-the-wall comedy, with hints of strangeness and hyper-realism. "I would rather create my own domain which is to generate uneasiness."

His style is very different from anything else produced in France today.

"As a musician, I have an audience almost everywhere in the world," he continues. "My films already target a niche audience, so if I settled only for France, I wouldn't do well at all. I think that in music, the non-English-speaker's complex is dead. There's no reason for this not to be the same in cinema."

Producer Gregory Bernard (Realitism Films, who is now working again with Dupieux on Wrong Cops, a film that is currently shooting) agrees: "It's all very well to see French stars doing well in Hollywood, but I think that culturally, it's also important to transpose our production model in the United States, to suggest our filmmaker's visions to American producers, and to make them over there! Our artists can speak to the whole world. The technology is now affordable, a bit like home studios in the 1990s. This will no doubt have to be done with films in English, but also with certain artists leading the way."

As for the other new films out this Wednesday in France, Le Pacte has released 253 copies of Cherchez Hortense [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Pascal Bonitzer's film that has just screened out of competition at the Venice Film Festival (read the review), while StudioCanal has released Michele Placido's The Lookout [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (a French-Belgian-Italian co-production featuring Daniel Auteuil, Mathieu Kassovitz, and Olivier Gourmet - read more) in 351 cinemas. Also out are Dorine Brun and Julien Meunier's documentary La Cause et l'Usage, and French director Pascal Laugier's US-Canadian thriller The Tall Man.

(Translated from French)