Quentin Dupieux is the rarest of all filmmakers: someone who is at their best when actively getting in their own way. A prankster of both the music and film scenes, his dual-career as electro-maestro Mr. Oizo and teasing deadpan feature film sketch-comedy auteur has inspired as much laughter as it has derision; talk to anyone about “that film about the killer car tyre” and it’s a coin-toss on if they’ll love or hate it. Yet over the course of his dozen-plus-two feature films, he has stuck to his guns in telling stories with a strong sense of side-eye, like a cross between Bertolt Brecht and Bert & Ernie, pausing the drama to take a peek behind the curtain or point out an invisible camera that shatters the stakes of the film and turns it into something else entirely. When it works, he creates a world of daft fun where anything is possible and nothing is serious. When it doesn’t, it can be infuriating. But what if he decided not to do that at all? Enter from stage left The Piano Accident, a bitter internet satire that contains much of Dupieux’s cold, clean visuals and abrasive humour, but curiously little of his narrative japery.
This comparatively-sincere tale begins with the ominous sight of a piano precariously creaking at the end of a crane, possibly dangling over something precious we can’t see below. Cut to the feeling-free world of Magalie Moreau (Adèle Exarchopoulos in her third collaboration with Dupieux), who arrives in a scenic if bleak Alpine retreat via helicopter, neckbrace on with a beslinged arm. She is irritable, childish and very, very rich, having earned unspeakable wealth through internet stardom that has landed her frequently in hot water. Accompanied by her long-suffering assistant Patrick (Jérôme Commandeur), she goes into crisis-mode when a journalist (Sandrine Kiberlain) gets in touch with a dangerous proposal: sit down for a two-hour interview or the world will know the truth about just what happened with that hanging piano. Soon Magalie’s sick little existence is forced to look at itself in the mirror, with dire consequences for all involved.
It must be said that no one can coax a performance out of French-speaking mega-stars quite like Quentin Dupieux. Jean Dujardin, Vincent Lindon, Léa Seydoux and Benoît Magimel are all well-respected actors who have gotten unprecedentedly goofy under the lens of world cinema’s most low-key surrealist, but it is perhaps Adèle Exarchopoulos who emerges as the most fearless. While she doesn’t quite go as loony as she did in Dupieux’s giant fly comedy Mandibles, yet she gives a mesmerisingly strange performance here as a child of the internet (or, rather, twin; one character remarks she was born on the exact day the technological revolution came into existence), whose inability to connect with anyone but her viewers leaves her in a very lonely place. She cuts a remarkably loathsome character out of some very simple cloth, sullen and miserable and impossible to talk to without being belittled, made even more blackly funny by the choice for her to wear the same set of braces she had from her first video over twenty years previously. Her condition that enables her to create her popular content with little consequence is possibly the bleakest thing Dupieux has ever put on-screen, and Exarchopoulos’ seething unpleasantness completely sells the concept (which is too good to properly spoil). She is supported by two admirably straight performances by Commandeur and Kiberlain, but ends up eclipsing both like a great dark moon blotting out all light from the proceedings.
As a satire, it’s perhaps surprising that Dupieux opts for a similar vein of modern bullshittery that another hot-button comedy writer like Ruben Östlund (born a day before Dupieux in another mad temporal coincidence) would go for, highlighting the banality of the stuff we mindlessly consume and the overinflated economic inequality that it breeds. Yet nothing is more alarming than Dupieux pretty much playing the entire joke at face value. While there are amusingly morbid expository cutaways and title drops that bend the story into interesting shapes, fans of Dupieux’s meta-commentaries may be disappointed to discover that there is nothing that throws the fabric of the story into question, which is perhaps something this particular story doesn’t need. Its distinct lack of a wink and a smile is almost unsettling, but ultimately leaves the whole endeavour quite thin; its climactic fatalism is indeed depressing and unfortunate, it just misses the fruity garnish many come to Dupieux’s cinema for. As it stands, it is as cold, hard and tasteless as the metal of Magalie’s braces, when what is needed is a bit more of Dupieux’s trademark silliness to make it stand out from other such ‘eat the rich’ films in the current climate.
However, there’s no denying Dupieux’s steady hand on atmosphere, with his signature crisp visual stylings fitting like a glove into the tidy, frozen lifestyle of a soulless YouTube star. Working as Mr. Oizo once again and scoring for the first time since Mandibles, he lends the drama an eerie metronomic rhythm with a repeated thunking key echoing in the distance, like a comedy death knell from a lone intermission pianist in the cinema with you. There are occasional strong laughs too, mostly centring on the horrible nature of Magalie’s videos that are introduced with catatonic levels of excitement, making it clear that Dupieux’s violent edge is still saw blade-sharp. It may just be the first time where we’ve seen him on auto-pilot, drifting through a lecture that is still delivered compellingly and atmospherically, yet bare bones to the same level as most of his other films are indulgent. In a few respects, this may make it his most marketable film, far more in the vein of Succession or Triangle of Sadness than it is any of his stranger films about pro-nicotine Power Rangers or dog psychics. And when all is fair and good in this brutal industry, more power to his arm if this is what lands him more money to do what he wants. Maybe his next will bring back the silly streak many know and love.
THE PIANO INCIDENT HAD ITS NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE AT FANTASTIC FEST 2025
