“Theatre is a series of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.”

There are countless wonderful quotes about the theatre and its role in the continual development of the arts as a means of social and cultural reflection, but this one by Tom Stoppard is most intriguing since it captures the accidental and potentially disastrous nature of live performance. It can be argued that the only experience more thrilling than seeing a play in which everything goes right is seeing one in which everything goes wrong, since its a rare occurrence, albeit one that can be oddly energizing in the right circumstances, and exhilarating to those with a penchant for the slightly absurd. In the case of Yannick, we find director Quentin Dupieux once again challenging the boundaries of not only his craft, but the limits of good taste, in employing a similar premise, telling the story of a theatre troupe performing an experimental new comedy, only to be confronted by the presence of Yannick, an eccentric member of their audience who expresses his disdain with their performance midway through the show. After an attempt to evict him for being a disturbance, he returns with a weapon, holding the entire theatre hostage and rewriting the play to be more aligned with his values and artistic curiosities. A hilarious and very bleak dark comedy hailing from the demented mind of perhaps the only filmmaker capable of taking such a bizarre concept and transforming it into a borderline revolutionary work, Yannick is quite an experience. Handcrafted by a director whose love for the absurd is intrinsically woven into one of his most oddly fluent films to date, it tells a story that reflects some serious themes, albeit delivering them in as outrageous and bizarre a manner as we’d expect from the acclaimed provocateur, the film challenges and unsettles in a truly unique manner, and once again proves that the director is truly at the very peak of his craft, an essential voice in the continued movement towards a new kind of cinema, one that is as daring and experimental as it was in previous watershed moments.

One of the more endearing traits that Dupieux has demonstrated over the years is his fondness for the dramatic, and few of his films have been more aligned with this particularly directorial flair than Yannick, which is not only narratively interwoven with the concept of the theatre, but also features specific elements that are entirely analogous with common traits that we usually associate with the medium. This is a unique film in how it evokes certain ideas – taking place entirely in a single location, and almost in real-time (the exact timeframe is not clear, but it certainly isn’t longer than an hour or two, in the context of the events that transpire), and in many ways, it becomes a play in itself, albeit one in which the audience within the film evolves into actors themselves, merging with the on-stage performers to create a very interesting dynamic that reflects several fascinating themes. Dupieux is often cited as being a director who has brilliant ideas, but whose work becomes divisive when it comes time to bring them to life – he’s undeniably divisive, and some may even consider him to be an acquired taste. Regardless of the position we take in terms of his skills, it’s difficult to not see Yannick as a major step forward, at least in terms of how it realizes its ideas in a way that is concise and direct. It’s amongst his most lucid films, particularly in the plot (which is effortlessly simple, not relying on twists or surprises nearly as much as his previous work), and also in the underlying commentary, which is kept quite straightforward, so as not to layer on the feeling that we should be peering too deep beneath the surface, and instead simply taking what we see on the screen at face value, at least for the most part. It’s a wonderfully eccentric film that features many of Dupieux’s most notable traits but is developed in such a way that they feel like they are progressing to something compelling – his tendency towards absurdity is the root of both his fervent base of supporters, as well as the legions of critics cynical to his art, and this is something that is quietly but exceptionally addressed throughout this film, often in the most unexpected ways.

Many actors view collaboration with Dupieux as being something of a contemporary rite of passage – he usually brings out very unique performances from his ensembles, and while he has mostly retained quite a consistent coterie of actors, he often introduces new talents into his deranged version of reality, which usually yields fascinating, if not outright exciting, results in most instances. Nestled right at the heart of Yannick is a performance by Raphaël Quenard, who is not a newcomer to the director’s world (having parts in a few of his previous films), but who finally steps out from the shadows of supporting roles, being positioned front-and-centre as the titular character in this film. As this theatre-critic-turned-domestic-terrorist, Quenard is incredible – it’s a one-dimensional character that he infuses with so much life, wit and complexity, that it elevates the entire film. The key to the performance is that he never plays it as anything less than entirely serious – there’s a tendency for some actors in the director’s films to adjust their performance to match the tempo of the story, blending in with the more off-kilter tone to match, or at least be compatible with, the overall atmosphere. Quenard plays Yannick like he is in the most intense, terrifying character-driven drama imaginable, never once showing a moment of self-awareness or breaking character, which is an incredible achievement that proves that he is one of the most promising, exciting actors of his generation. The last year has been a remarkable one for Quenard, with his leading role in several films positioning him as a very unique voice in contemporary French cinema, and being able to not only tackle Dupieux’s perverse vision, but do so in a way that defines the film entirely (whereby this is one of the rare instances where one of the director’s films is not driven by the concept, but rather the performance) is beyond impressive, and one of the many signals that he is a truly gifted performer with a bright future ahead.

Despite outright being told by the director throughout the film that there isn’t a deeper meaning to Yannick, we cannot avoid the inevitable attempts to decode precisely what he intended to say with this film, which leads to one of the most delightfully off-beat ironies when it comes to the cinematic form we’ve seen in quite a while, which is that this film is so vacant of meaning and against the efforts to layer complex ideas on what is a very simple story, it ultimately proves to have an abundance of sub-text, and it often feels as if the film is at odds with its complexity, fighting against the idea that there is something beneath the surface, so much that its efforts to dismantle this conception ultimately leads to some meaning emerging. It’s cyclical and frustratingly brilliant, and something that has intentions that we are never quite capable of grasping, which is where its impact resides. Dupieux is consistently trying to state to us, in no uncertain terms, that everyday life is theatre – we may think it is mostly defined as the relationship between actors on stage and audiences that passively watch them, with the boundary between the two being seemingly infallible and indestructible – that is until someone dares cross that border, shattering the proverbial fourth wall and presenting his own opinions on the work. Theatre, like many other forms of art, is a medium in which the relationship between the artist and their audience is almost linear – an artwork is created, and then the audience receives it and is given the chance to critique, but very rarely shifts the way the art is delivered. Yannick dares to imagine a scenario – set within a vaguely dystopian, nonsensical version of reality – in which this is not the case, where someone can simply stop work being produced and demand it is made in his vision, which somehow creates even better art. As the quote by Stoppard suggests, theatre is one of the rare mediums in which disaster is not viewed as being entirely detrimental – such obstacles can shift the way the art is presented, but sometimes unsettling the status quo can result in even richer and more evocative art – but as the final shot suggests, this may not always be ideal, since it unsettles the previously sacrosanct balance that comes with the conventional relationship between artists and their audiences.

The exact intentions Dupieux had with the overall narrative of Yannick, as well as its eventual conclusion that is both hilarious and bleak, is not clear, and whether it is a critique of critics themselves or a brutal deconstruction of the art world and its preoccupation with its brilliance. Yet, it is incredibly entertaining and wickedly funny and possesses a sardonic streak that is impossible to overlook. The film is extremely curt, running just over an hour (we should encourage more directors to consider making shorter films like this from time to time since it is a delight to be able to find a film with such a strong, fully-formed concept that doesn’t once overstay its welcome), so there isn’t much space for it to delve too deep into many of its ideas. Yet, it still feels complete and detailed enough to be considered a thoroughly engaging work, a ferocious and infantile deconstruction of the art world, showing the inherent theatricality of everyday life, and implying quite strongly that the most fascinating kind of performance is the one we engage in daily, or everyday lives becoming a show in itself, manipulated and reconfigured into various forms by extermine factors. Dupieux is the most deranged of geniuses, someone whose worldview teeters dangerously on perverted, but in a way that is revealing and daring, and ultimately essential to how we perceive the world around us. Yannick is one of his most comprehensible, intriguing productions, and its underlying message, while sometimes quite tenuous, proves to be genuinely quite compelling, and forms the film into one of the most engaging critiques on the nature of art, as well as a profoundly funny meditation on the act of creation. It all coalesces into a chaotic, delightfully strange dark comedy with broad allusions to deeper issues and a lot of very entertaining humour that ultimately proves to be extremely captivating and wonderfully bizarre.