Yannick (2023) User Reviews

Strange, fun, interesting

[tux-12 · 6/10 · 4 December 2023]

This film, as is often the case with Quentin Dupieux, leaves you a little disconcerted. The sudden ending prohibits any step back from the story that has just unfolded. The first half will surely make you laugh with its zaniness. The second half, turning to the taking of hostages by this individual who has become threatening, is less funny. We're looking for the message, but there doesn't seem to be any. We deride the troublemaker, the mediocrity of the actors, the cowardice of the spectators. Without any real conclusion.

I am sure that all theatre actors will shudder as they perhaps recall a similar experience of a provocateur interrupting the play they are performing. A sabotage that more twists and turns could have made exciting. Far too many films are at least an hour too long. This one could add additional time.

Quite linear and straight, with as usual a reflexion on film

[norbert-plan-618-715813 · 7/10 · 20 April 2024]

This is the director's most linear film, if not his clearest. We know that Quentin Dupieux often, if not almost always, talks about film, the work of art, the way it is made, the impression it makes on the viewer. Here, he questions what a work of art is, and the viewer's relationship to it. Raphaël Quenard watches a play of relatively poor quality as a spectator, and decides to modify and rewrite it. By playing a character we understand to be rather depressed, or more simply not well at all.

The staging is simple and limpid, to highlight the dialogues: both those of the play, and those of Raphaël Quenard's character. A great deal of work has gone into this aspect.

So we're not dealing here with a process that might seem absurd, as in many of the director's films. But in a way, it's a film that explains how to approach all Quentin Dupieux's previous films. Isn't Raphaël Quenard's character Quentin Dupieux? Questioning films and what they're supposed to bring to the viewer. He could stop now and we'd understand all his work.

It's surprising to see the police arrive at the end. This anchors the film in a reality to which Quentin Dupieux has not accustomed us. It's a way of making Raphaël Quenard's observation real.

Subversive and sincere, a breath of fresh air in the face of ambient mediocrity.

[piloutefire · 9/10 · 27 January 2024]

Quentin Dupieux's absurd, disjointed and fanciful humour gives way here to the absurdity of the situation in a palpable reality. A radical change of tone compared to his previous films that really feels good. Touching, sincere and magical, Yannick is a breath of fresh air in a world of comedy that is constantly muttering. Social criticism, comedy criticism, criticism of the public, criticism of the creator in his relationship to the work as well as the public.

The actors are excellent in bad actor, the audience faithful to itself and Raphaël Quenard embodies so well a Yannick full of surprise and who with simple words summarizes so well the mediocre of the situation. Yannick is in the political background, the service is no longer satisfactory, the art is taken in hand by a representative of the people, a true pirate, passionate about sincerity, passionate about justice. And it does better, gives meaning and reminds us that we sleep, we're asleep. But how long has it been? An echo more than real with our life, our situation in front of the ambient mediocrity.

The finale is as magnificent as it is frightening in its latest plan, a confrontation of reality and a system that is complete in its status quo confronting the underlying violence of society. But we do not have to see this aspect to get a kick, Yannick is simple, funny, really funny and especially really well done. Personally I love Quentin's films, but it's hard to see for someone who doesn't usually like the absurd. Here the form, like history, everyone can follow it, everyone can understand and it is done brilliantly, a true little subversive and sincere jewel, to see urgently.

Disappointing

[slabihoud · 5/10 · 3 November 2023]

Someone applauds and everyone follows, is drawn into it. This seems to be the case with this film, in the story but also the film itself. Though only 1 hour and 7 minutes long it still manages to be testing your patience. The synopsis of the film presented it in a much better light. Maybe I should have stood up and left, but, like the audience in the film, I was hoping for a satisfying finale act.

In vain! I didn't find the film more entertaining than the play that gets interrupted by Yannick. I don't see the point in this film, where a weak boulevard play is interrupted by someone who roots for an even inferior play. The film makes fun of Yannick, the actors of the play and also the audience in turn. But to see a fool being foolish and being laughed at till he turns the table on the others who now begin to look foolish, including the audience, is no great art either and not really better than the play it mocks.

Of course, you could argue that the story should be looked at as a political statement: a fool, critizising other fools in view of a foolish audience, but honestly, others have done that much better.