★★★★
The best Dupieux since Mandibles: an acidly absurdist satire of influencer culture, delivered deadpan as it builds into horror.
Quentin Dupieux has always been a prankster with stamina. He’ll run a dumb gag until it stops being goofy and starts to hurt. A killer tire, a jacket with bloodlust, two idiots raising a fly. He doesn’t even need a gimmick this time. Internet celebrity is already ridiculous. The Piano Accident shows us Jackass with no joy; just blood for clicks.
Magalie (Adèle Exarchopoulos) was born without the ability to feel pain. So she sells her wounds online. She bleeds for views. After a piano stunt goes disastrously wrong she hides away in a chalet with her assistant. But fame breeds attention, and soon a journalist reaches out with a warm smile and cold eyes, and blackmails her into her first ever interview. Magalie has never really opened up before; now she can’t shut up. Then things start to get really out of hand.
Exarchopoulos is razor-sharp – brittle, bellowing, funny, hateful, and familiar. She’s frighteningly recognisable, exactly what you’d expect a culture built on attention to cough up. Dupieux edits with a musician’s ear, keeping it lean at 88 minutes but letting scenes breathe until the silence turns uneasy.
At the core of the film is Magalie’s inability to explain to her interviewer why she does what she does. Ionesco suggested that “Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose… Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.” Dupieux suggests that if you gaze long enough into the abyss, it might ask you to like and subscribe.
The Piano Accident doesn’t parody internet celebrity, it just looks at it, deadpan, until you start laughing and then feel sick for laughing. Dupieux wryly pokes at the lack of meaning until it stops being funny, then keeps going until it starts again. So if you’re on the right wavelength the humour will come in waves – although those waves will peak at different times for different audiences. It’s a good trick, and Dupieux hasn’t pulled it off this well in years. The Piano Accident is a dark, deadpan delight.
The Piano Accident played Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX
Whitlock&Pope 