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‘The Second Act’ Review: Léa Seydoux and Louis Garrel Question Their Choices in Slight, Self-Aware Cannes Opener
Quentin Dupieux kicks off Cannes with a meta-textual amuse bouche, in which four stars squabble about why they're making such a formulaic movie.
I hated that movie — an aggressively unfunny amalgam of sketches in which Alain Chabat played an aspiring filmmaker in search of the perfect groan — though contrarian French culture mag Les Inrockuptibles just ranked it as Dupieux’s best. Improvising the dialogue for a long walk-and-talk scene in which David (Garrel) asks Willy (Quenard) to seduce his clingy girlfriend Florence (Seydoux), the actors riff about political correctness, cancel culture and trans identity. In the meantime, the characters bicker constantly, as when Guillaume (Lindon) storms out of his first scene, complaining that he’s lost faith in the dying artform … until his agent calls to say he’s been cast in Paul Thomas Anderson’s next film.
Or read this on Variety
