Vertiginous (Fantastic Fest 2026)

In the 20th century, the idea of living in a simulation looked like it would really suck. From William Gibson to the Wachowski Sisters, fiction writers were very paranoid about our autonomy being ripped away from the fabric of our reality, bar getting a sick pair of shades and a flowing leather trench coat in the latter artists’ vision. But today, in the accursed year of our Lord 2026, would we be as bothered to find out that our world, so steeped in digital slop and artificial unintelligence, is actually just a buggy, laggy construct? French multi-hypenate prankster Quentin Dupieux is keen to find out, and his first animated feature Le vertige (also known as Vertiginous – that sinking feeling of dizziness at a great height) gives no easy answers.

Taking places in a world where people are stiff, awkward, expressionless polygons, middle-aged banker Jacky (Dupieux regular Alain Chabat) has discovered 264 pointers that suggest his surroundings aren’t quite how they appear. There’s a pigeon stuck flying inside a manhole cover; a woman in the local patisserie has eight fingers on one hand; a hat has been floating in the Seine in one spot for days on end. He needs to share his groundbreaking discovery, and goes to break it to friend and father-to-be Bruno (Jonathan Cohen), a sceptic and so-called rationalist who stores a scooter engine in his kitchen cupboard because it fits nicely and barely bats an eyelid when his wife Fabienne (Anaïs Demoustier) gives birth in an instant to a baby lacking in an umbilical cord. Together, the two combative friends embark on a curious odyssey to unpick the seams of their fragile world, finding themselves undone in the process.

Dupieux is no stranger to reality-bending deadpan; in fact, it becomes more surprising when one of his films doesn’t flip itself on its head to make you question everything you’ve seen beforehand. Yet he’s rarely done it quite like this, letting you know straight out the gate that something is deeply off through its very presentation. Dupieux doing animation is certainly uncanny; the poorly rendered versions of familiar faces from his oeuvre is never not hilarious, like a funhouse mirror reflection of French cinema through the lens of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. 

The film appears to have been constructed in something akin to a game engine from 2003, yet miraculously also possesses the same visual composition and languid tracking movements as your average Dupieux joint. How Dupieux has harnessed such a distinctive technology and moulded it into something instantly recognisable as his very own is borderline miraculous, turning a light satirical exercise into a low-fidelity technological marvel.

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Chabat and Cohen have a dry chemistry that shines through the handful of stock facial expressions their characters are programmed with, and the self-defeating monotony of their argument really takes the film to some amusing and disarmingly thoughtful places. There’s an existentialism to their plight that Dupieux explores thoroughly: if knowing you’re in a simulation changes nothing, does that make it all okay? And even if you were a simple cause to another being’s effect, would you care? Chabat’s Jacky hasn’t seen The Matrix, so his concerns aren’t pop cultural, nor are they angry at an unfair cosmic system that seems apathetic to him; Cohen’s Bruno seems more annoyed that he’s simply been asked these questions in the first place.

A third act shift towards crucifying the tech-bro community is an ambitious leap that Dupieux somehow pulls off, and his final word on the whole troubling issue of whether or not his characters have any autonomy at all is one of his best punchlines; while a few Dupieux films tend to fizzle out towards their conclusion, this hits a well-timed budumptisk and calls it quits at the perfect moment. Even more of a treat is what comes after, throwing back to a particular type of end credits stinger we’ve rarely seen in a good decade or two. Dupieux’s finger is simultaneously on today’s pulse and the pulse of yesteryear in a way that feels warmly nostalgic, and importantly never cheap.

While it might feel like minor Dupieux (this runs for 67 minutes – his shortest feature to date), there have rarely been ideas that have worked more coherently in his filmography, still pulling the occasional hairpin swerve into a narrative-breaking twist and dabbling in the surreal, but actually getting to say something amid the chaos. Scored with extremely minimal compositions that sound like the heat death of the universe as a dripping tap or a leaking balloon, this thoughtful trifle is as accessible as the madman’s sketched-out worldview can get, and he hasn’t lost an iota of his adventurousness in the process.

SIMON’S ARCHIVE – Vertiginous