Fabrice Andrivon's review: “Daaaaaali!”, a delirium at the height of the iconoclastic Catalan painter Dali

Dali, par Pio Marmaï. DR – ATELIER DE PRODUCTION – FRANCE 3 CINEMA 2023

Le film est programmé à Mende, cette semaine.

Dupieux, avec son extravagant Daaaaaali !, continues to do us good as well as French cinema. Always exploring previously unexplored regions, in a comic and absurd tone that we thought was lost, he always ends up taking us fully into his delirium.

Everything is of course based on the iconoclastic Catalan painter and his media charisma, his assumed egocentrism, his prankish megalomania, filmed under strong Bunuelian influence. Dupieux chooses different actors to play him and he gets away with various successes (special mention for Baer and Cohen), but he relies above all on a scenario "with drawers" paying full homage to surrealism.

Complete delirium

We take pleasure in the game of these embedded stories, these improbable recurring characters and this sweet delirium that is truly… daliesque. Dupieux traces his furrow in this improbable vein and we say to ourselves that he is, at present, the only one who can prove himself worthy of the sense of complete delirium of the Spanish artist. Foodies will find it a shame that the filmmaker stops at the image of the painter, at the funny aspect of the character, without delving into the more baroque delusions of his painting or his psyche .

And, it's true that if you're looking for a biopic of the master, you'll be worth your money. We can even criticize Dupieux for his dilettantism and for getting lost in a few unnecessary scenes (Anaïs Demoustier has a lot to do with it). But he remains the only filmmaker who can pull off a truly great farcical film of this ilk. AAAAAGo ahead!

I subscribe to read more