Keep an Eye Out (2018) User Reviews

Never find a corpse outside your apartment building!

[guy-bellinger · 8/10 · 9 October 2018]

A police station, a suspect interrogated for hours and hours by a nasty inspector..., the scene has been shown over and over in hundreds of crime movies. One could go as far as to consider the thing as a sub genre in itself, its most masterful illustration being Claude Miller's classic "Garde à vue" (Under Suspicion). No one indeed has forgotten tough inspector Lino Ventura psychologically torturing an artful Michel Serrault over a night's time. Well, there is no denying that "Au poste" (Keep an Eye Out) adds to a long long list but the good surprise is that it does it in its own, singular way. One can even affirm that such a "police interrogation movie" has never been seen before! Not so surprising if you take into account the fact that Dupieux has never once made what could be called a "normal" movie, let alone told the type of story that lazily unfurls between a beginning and an end, featuring stereotyped characters with predictable reactions. Such a conversion to stale conventions would in fact have constituted a total disappointment from a man who dared (and managed) to make a film around a... tyre killer ("Rubber") or else about a director who has 48 hours to find the best... groan of pain in film history ("Reality")! Well if conventions and clichés there are, they are here only to be challenged, mocked and demolished. And although one may in a way say that this is Dupieux's "most normal" work of all, you are sure to find a lot of oddities sticking out from the rigid frame of the police interrogation genre: dreams, flash forwards encased in flashbacks and others I will refrain from detailing not to kill the surprise effect. What you'd better not do is mistake "Keep an Eye Out" for a "normal" movie. If you do so, you are likely to be taken aback and reject the whole thing. On the contrary, il you consider it as a reflection on a coded genre, you are on the right track to enjoyment. For, if you look closely, you will find that Quentin Dupieux's last opus works on no fewer than three levels, which is for those who perceive it a threefold source of pleasure:

• a plain crime story which, despite being crossed by whiffs of irrationality, remains basically believable. The situation itself, the story as well as the characters, minus their eccentricities, are indeed quite realistic. Moreover, the dialogues are well written, funny and uttered with talent by two masters of comedy, Benoît Poelvoorde (the bad-ass inspector) and Grégoire Ludig (the helpless suspect), both more sober than they usually are.
• a satire challenging the clichés and set pieces of the sub genre already mentioned: the charmless interior of the police station; the worn out, a bit sadistic interrogator and his dubious jokes ; the suspect maintaining his innocence without being able to prove it, the cigarettes, sandwiches, colleagues dropping in and out, ... It is all here, but in a slightly offbeat, farcical way.
• a commentary on the theatricality of such "in camera" dramas. Dupieux shrewdly plays on the fact that as soon as a murder is committed and suspects are interrogated, each of the protagonists seems to play a role written in advance and is at a loss as to how to extricate themselves from having to live out that role.

To make a long story short, you will find "Keep an Eye Out" either an exciting or a senseless movie, depending on whether you play the game or not. I wish you to be in the second case.

You reject it or you embrace it !

[romaincolpart · 8/10 · 29 December 2018]

I'm not familiar with Quentin's Dupieux work, but i'm most definitly going to correct that ! It is burlesque as one would hope, the work of the DOP is great and really imersive. The casting is perfect, all in all a great achievement.

Almost normal

[kosmasp · 8/10 · 25 February 2019]

If you are aware of the body of work the director has created, you probably don't need to read what I or others have to say. If you are not sure check the biography/filmography of the director. Anything familiar there? This right here may feel familiar but also almost feels "normal", especially considering this has a story that is quite coherent.

I say quite, because there are still a lot of things that are "weird" to put it mildly. You can't even begin to guess all the twists and turns, because we get treated with something unexpected from time to time. I personally love to be challenged like that. You have to know if that is your thing or not. If not, then I'd obviously advice you not to watch this. It would be a waste of time for you and a bad review for the movie obviously.

Definitely very WEIRD. And I mean really really WEIRD. But good fun nonetheless. Only suited though for arthouse movie fans of bizarre, quirky tales.

[imseeg · 7/10 · 17 January 2020]

Wanna be really really confused while watching a comedy, then you gotta see a Quentin Dupieux movie. Just to inform you how weird all of his movies are, he made another movie about a car tire. Yes, you read that right, an entire movie about a car tire, that started a life on it's own, because that car tire started to kill people. Weird enough for you?

This movie is one of the least weirdest movies Quentin Dupieux has made though, but I GUARANTEE you, that you will be freaked out at some point anyway, because his stories are uniquely weird and bizar.

Oh, you still wanna know what this story is about? It starts out as a simple inquiry at a police station about a dead man found on the doorstep of someone's house. Things go off into all sorts of weird AND funny directions after that seemingly innocent start...

Any bad? Well, the reason I only award it with 7 stars is because of the fact that being a weird picture isnt enough to keep me interested for 90 minutes. Any comedy, however weird, for me personally, also HAS to be true to life in some kind of way. This movie isnt and therefore I will only award it with 7 stars.

But if you are dumbfounded and delighted by this movie then please do check out some of the unique other Quentin Dupieux movies though, because this director WILL CONFUSE YOU in ways you have never experienced before... I am not kiddin'...

During the best moments I laughed a lot

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 17 December 2019]

"Au poste!" is a Belgian/French co-production from 2018 that was written and directed by Quentin Dupieux and maybe you know the name maybe you don't. However, unless you are really young, maybe you still remember this little yellow creature nack Flat Eric who had a really big techno hit song like 20 years ago almost now I believe and the man behind this was Quentin Dupieux. So pretty special to see he has turned into a really successful filmmaker over the years that also the big names want to work with. I will get to the cast later on. First still about the basics, I would like to say that this is really not a long film at slightly under 75 minutes and it is a fairly unusual runtime that you don't see too often. Still it is not uncommon at all for Dupieux. Fir example he made another recent film starring Oscar winner Jean Dujardin and Adèle Haenel and it is also shorter than 80 minutes. It is perfectly fine though for me. Better keep it essential like this than include 15 minutes of filler material that add nothing of quality to the story or any other aspects of the movie and only result in the audience getting the impression that the film has some lengths.

Now back to this movie we have here again. Even if the only cast member I am familiar with is Benoît Poelvoorde I see that pretty much everybody working on this one is really established actors who have starred in many many films. Oh wait, I do know Michel Hazanivicius too of course, just not as an actor. So this one as the title (the German more than the French) gives away already takes place at a police station and a lot in here is police interrogation. But this is no gritty crime drama. It is really all about the comedy from beginning to end. It already starts in the most bizarre mannee as we have a guy in underwear be in charge of a big orchestra and eventually he gets caught and taken to the station. No further explanations here. It's just the introduction and it takes os to the film's key location. From that moment on, it is one bizarre moment after the next. Be it the guy eating the whole oyster, the smoke getting out of the body, the guy and his triangle-shaped ruler or at the center of it all the really strange flashbacks. With these I am talking about the fact that really time in a chronological sense is not a factor here at all. When we are taken back to the night when the incident happened we have a female character ask questions in these flashbacks about something that happened minutes ago at the police station. This is the big joke. The smaller joke is also clocks going wildly crazy, both digital clocks and wall clocks. And at the end we see everything really is a big farce as the action moves on to a theater stage and everybody was in on it from the beginning, except the guy who is interrogated it seems. Nothing makes sense here and for once I am not saying this as a criticism. This was absolutely intended to add charm to the movie, even define the movie at its core. So this is not one to watch if you want the aforementioned crime drama with suspense, but just watch it if you are in for a goofy fun time. Even if admittedly it would not have surprised me at all eventually with how kind the suspect has been from the very start if he had turned out a cold-blooded killer in the end then, even if the lab report somewhat proves he is innocent. Maybe this was also the idea that Dupieux had when ending the film with the guy in cuffs again. Of course, not everything is working here from start to finish comedy-wise, otherwise I would have given this film a higher rating. For example the idea of how he keeps leaving the apartment that night and everything related to his wife did very little for me. But there it also becomes obvious Dupieux does not care about time when we see the guy with the one (no zero) eye(s) on television talking to the man. Or how they keep talking about how much of the flashbacks they can see and understand. Basically the film's take on comedy is summarized nicely in this helicopter crash story and afterwards this dog story both being told by the two people you see on the poster here and that nothing of it was really true. I laughed and at the film's best moments it definitely deserves 4 stars out of 5, but the ending, i.e. the last 15 minutes, I did not like too much so I will settle with 3. But I can see why this film scored some awards recognition, it is definitely really creative and almost unique in a certain way. If you like it or not, is up to you to decide. I can see this being a pretty divisive film like probably most other stuff by Dupieux. I give it a thumbs-up though and am glad I saw it.

Keep an eye (in the strict sense) out

[bob998 · 7/10 · 13 August 2023]

When I see Benoit Poelvoorde's name on a movie, I always watch. He's become the new Pierre Richard, if you remember The Blond Man With a Brown Shoe from the 70's. Only thing, Poelvoorde is much tougher than the benign Richard. Watching him can be a little exhausting.

Whatever, here we have a surrealist caper masquerading as a police procedural. I think Dupieux must have been influenced by Bunuel and by Argento, for the surreal aspects and the violence. What happens to Philippe in the office has to be seen to be believed (it involves a protractor). The acting is first rate, from Poelvoorde as the bullying detective and Gregoire Ludig as the harried suspect. There's a wonderful turn by Anais Demoustier as Philippe's girlfriend, constantly saying 'actually' to everyone's exasperation. I'll be looking out for more of Dupieux's work.

I Want To Like This More, But....

[dungeonstudio · 6/10 · 8 October 2022]

Definitely a fan of Quentin's ever since I saw Rubber. But I don't know French, and my eyes are getting old and hard to see subtitles now. And that's the BIGGEST problem with this movie, is that the majority takes place in this very bright police office. Much of the white subtitles are washed out by light, white paper on desks, white shirts. VERY hard for me to keep up with and understand whatever was going on. If there were slightly yellow or greyed subtitles, or placed on the ratio bars with a slight change to aspect ratio - or dare I say a 'English dub' version, I think this movie would be a lot better enjoyed and appreciated. As it stands now for us anglophones, it's more a mysterious mystery than a twisted comedy.

Wonderfully creative and highly entertaining, actually

[I_Ailurophile · 9/10 · 14 April 2024]

There are plenty of filmmakers who ply their trade in the weird and surreal, but nobody does it to quite the extent, with as much of a personal style, as Quentin Dupieux. No one else but his collaborators have the same sensibilities of wry, dry, somewhat dark, oddball humor. Even more to the point, I'm hard-pressed to name anyone else who likes to play so cheerfully with boundaries of "reality" within their features, discarding any specific notion of a concrete universe or setting and allowing lines to blur between far-flung perspectives just for the heck of it so they can all bleed together. At that, 'Keep an eye out' - or 'Au poste!' as the French title would have it - is relatively grounded and ordinary as far as Dupieux's oeuvre goes; it's only rather gradually that the wilder side of the storytelling creeps in, and this otherwise deigns to pretend it's a straightforward crime drama. But even at its most "ordinary" the movie is still joyfully offbeat as a common narrative scenario (police interrogating a suspect), and mundane nothings (the interviewee's described activities) are drawn out, focused upon, and woven together. Though it may not be as immediately and outwardly grabbing as some of his other works, make no mistake that when all is said and done there's no questioning that this is kith and kin with all that the man does, and I could scarcely be more delighted.

As Dupieux again assumes control over most aspects of the production - writer, director, photographer, and editor - he can shape the resulting film to his will and vision; maybe this helps to explain why everything in his body of work has such a unified feel about it. Here the method is comparatively restrained as we're chiefly greeted with a visual presentation that is gleaned directly from earnest fare of the 70s: hair, makeup, costume design, sets, music, and not least the warm hues of the image and the softness of the cinematography. Only very smoothly and casually are the idiosyncratic tendencies we know and love teased out in the storytelling, while the cast plays it straight all the while, and as they are one can't help but be enchanted. It's not that 'Keep an eye out' is as dazzlingly creative or captures the imagination as completely as, say, 'Rubber,' 'Deerskin,' 'Smoking causes coughing,' or 'Réalité,' but in its more gently underhanded tack this title nevertheless revels just as much in the same frivolities and frivolousness. One might reasonably argue that since this is less plainly peculiar, it could even be a fair point of entry to Dupieux for those who don't want to dive headfirst into his twisted mind. No matter how you slice it, however, this remains another superb, highly entertaining step in the filmmaker's cinematic journey.

Everything looks and sounds terrific here, and as among the stars Benoît Poelvoorde and Grégoire Ludig do most of the heavy-lifting, they especially are to be commended for so heartily embracing the spirit of the piece. It remains true, though, that Dupieux's keen wit and inventive ideas of storytelling are the primary draw for all his flicks, and this is no different. His tremendously fun screenplay lays out the path; his guidance as director ensures that no foot strays from that path of cheerfully, nonchalantly, but definitively defying norms and boundaries of fiction. When all is said and done the movie is simply a blast - we should expect no less - and anyone who at all appreciates what Dupieux does will enjoy themselves just as much in these 73 minutes. What he does won't appeal to all comers, but if you're open to all the wide, wacky possibilities that the medium has to offer, 'Keep an eye out' is low-key brilliant and a gem that's not to be missed!