Deerskin is in Berlin cinemas now. Photo: Koch Films
The new film by Quentin Dupieux, AKA the producer Mr Oizo, is a delicious deadpan slasher that’s as deceptively smart as it is hilarious.
Having opened the Director’s Fortnight at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and delayed due to the pandemic, Quentin Dupieux’s new feature is finally being released and is making its way to a few freiluftkinos near you.
Fantastically renamed ‘Monsieur Killerstyle’ in Germany, Deerskin is a brilliantly batshit pitch-black comedy that follows one middle-aged man’s sociopathic quest to make his deerskin jacket the only jacket in the world. Why? Because his jacket told him to destroy all other jackets, whatever the costs. Or body count.
That defence should hold up in court nicely.
Starring Jean Dujardin and Portrait Of A Lady On Fire’s Adèle Haenel, the film’s absurdist and slyly satirical tone is strongly reminiscent of Dupieux’s previous surrealist comedies (Rubber, Wrong) and would make for a perfect double-bill with Peter Strickland’s underseen (and, it has to be said, superior) haunted dress giallo In Fabric. While it sometimes feels like this could have been a perfect macabre gem of a short film and that its wafer-thin premise is stretched to breaking point despite the taut 77-minute runtime, Deerskin still holds up as a delicious deadpan slasher that’s as deceptively smart as it is hilarious.
Le Daim (Deerskin) / Directed by Quentin Dupieux (France, 2019), with Jean Dujardin, Adèle Haenel. Re-released from April 30.
