DAAAAAALÍ! - Mark Reviews Movies

Daaaaaalí, Music Box Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 3, 2024

Leave it to a filmmaker with absurdist tendencies to find a novel way to tell the story of a surrealist painter. That's what writer/director Quentin Dupieux has done with Daaaaaalí!, which isn't so much about Salvador Dalí's life and work as it is about the general idea of the man. As presented here and played by five different actors, the artist exists in a self-contained world of the strange and inexplicable, and soon enough, everyone around him, as well as the film itself, is pulled into that realm.

It would be ridiculous to attempt to explain the plot, which itself becomes string of running gags, seemingly unending dream sequences, and a reflection of a reflection of itself. Actually, that might be missing a few layers of reflection, but the fun of this wacky comedy about a famously eccentric man is witnessing those layers being pulled off, tossed aside, and put back in place without any warning.

There is a plot, though, and it revolves around a French journalist named Judith (Anaïs Demousiter), who is and isn't the protagonist of this story. At the top, she's explaining the story of her own life—how she was a pharmacist, found it boring work, and decided, on a whim, to become a journalist. She's speaking directly to us, apparently, staring straight down the lens of the camera in the bedroom of a hotel suite. Is this a sign of some hidden ego within this otherwise quiet and unassuming woman, as she imagines being important enough to be subject of an interview with a made-up reporter?

If that's the case, it means little when a walking, talking embodiment of ego finally arrives for his interview. It is the eponymous man himself: Dalí, who speaks of his life and work in the third person, while being convinced that, not only is he greatest living artist, but also is the only real artist currently living in whatever period the film is set. Time doesn't matter here or, apparently, for Dalí, who appears at various ages throughout the narrative and is even scolded by his wife Gala (Catherine Schaub-Abkarian) for the anachronism of painting a piece that either was already or will later be painted.

Indeed, space itself doesn't seem to affect the man, who's initially played by Edouard Baer (The other Dalís are Jonathan Cohen, Gilles Lellouche, Pio Marmaï, and Didier Flamand). While Judith and one of the artist's assistants (played by Marie Bunel) wait for the man to walk to the room, Dalí just keeps walking down the hallway. He complains of the layout and design of the hotel, as both women leave the hall to make last-minute preparations, and every time the camera returns to see the painter, the man has made no progress in his approach. It's as if the hall itself is constantly adjusting, ensuring that Dalí has enough time and distance to make all of his complaints and to ensure that the room is exactly to his liking.

It's a very funny gag, but with it, Dupieux also announces a few things about his film. For one, this certainly will not be some ordinary biography or, indeed, any sort of biography in which facts, chronology, or straightforward storytelling have any sway. For another, it does assert that Dalí is almost a magical presence within the world, which may or may not the real one or a dream or a movie within Dupieux's piece. It could be all of those things, really, at any given moment or throughout the whole of the film, and the mystery of the structure here is both tantalizing and yet another excuse for even more jokes.

Some of them are genuinely inspired, such as Dalí's seaside home, which is presumably in Spain—although the actual location is irrelevant, given the joke. Part of the home includes a tunnel that seemingly leads directly into the artist's own mind, where models—including a man with a leg growing out of his head—pose for him—with one's wife quite annoyed by her husband's absence. There's nothing odd or special about this for Dalí, who's interrupted from his everyday work by a call from Judith.

She wants another chance to interview him, since Dalí abandoned the interview when he realized it wasn't going to be filmed. This time, she has arranged a camera and a feature-length movie to be produced by Jérôme (Romain Duris). Dalí won't pass up that kind of opportunity.

The rest of the story can't be communicated, both because it's too elaborately self-enveloping and because it is primarily a string of jokes that are better experienced without much knowledge. One involves the dream of a priest (played by Éric Naggar) who wants Dalí to paint the scene from his sleeping mind in order to auction the painting to support his church. The joke of the dream is repeated over and over, and just when we—and Dalí, for that matter—think we're in the clear of its reappearance, Dupieux returns to it when it's least expected.

The other main gag is the nature of the film itself, which might belong to Dalí, to Judith, or, maybe, to both on some subconscious level. Daaaaaalí! is consistently inventive, routinely funny, and intrinsically insightful about its subject—not as a man or artist, but as a larger-than-life figure who's impossible to pigeonhole, dissect, or otherwise restrict. This is Dalí's world, and everyone else is lucky enough to be part of it.

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