Deerskin: NZIFF Review

Deerskin: NZIFF Review

French director Quentin Dupieux, the guy who brought us Rubber, returns to the festival with an offbeat look at masculinity and bizarrely, fashion.

A greying Jean DuJardin is Georges, a man who appears firstly on the road, and secondly out of sorts. Clad in ill-fitting chinos, and drably coutured, his first stop is at a rest stop, where he throws his jacket in the loo, pushes it down with his feet, and retreats as the facilities begin to flood.

Having dispatched his wardrobe with veritable aplomb, Georges buys a full length, tassles and all, deerskin jacket, that comes with a digital video recorder. Dubbed The Beast by its seller, the jacket seems to exert a hold over Georges, demanding that all jackets be destroyed....

Deerskin is dubbed as a comedy, but it's not exactly laugh-out-loud amusing, more unusual and offbeat than anything.

Beiges, browns and other drab colours provide a palette of malaise that affects much of the mood of the film, and symbolises the collective atmosphere of loss.

DuJardin is committed to the lunacy and the delusion, but grounds his Georges in a kind of broken sadness that's universally recognised, before it teeters off ultimately and heads into the unhinged arena.

At 76 minutes, the film's stretched about as thin as it can go, but the descent into madness is well put together and sold mainly by DuJardin's sense of detachment and Adele Haenel's Denise's desperation to escape a crummy job and buy into the delusion.

"You can't make sense of it now, but it rocks," is one line intoned during proceedings, and may be much of the audience reaction to how Deerskin plays out, and descends into obvious genre tropes.

Ultimately, Deerskin paints itself into a corner, as is demonstrated by an ending that comes out of the blue, but Dupieux's commitment to the journey of lunacy allows it to not outstay its welcome.

Just.