Paris

A play is being performed in a small theater: The cuckold.

The three actors on stage are exchanging rather spicy jokes while a spectator stands up interrupting to air his criticism: the play is completely disregarding his expectations; he works as a night watchman, has very little vacation time and leave; he has taken 45 minutes by train and 15 minutes on foot therefore he expects to be entertained, to be moved, to be given something to reflect on, instead no, there is nothing that can compensate for his expectations.

He is asked if he can continue the performance but he does not relent, he has a gun, he asks for a computer and one of the spectators grants him his ... the screen image is embarrassing and the password is "vaginal."

He proceeds with writing a play subject with great slowness as he is not proficient in typing.

The spectators are patient as the patron's entertainment is quite stimulating, while the actors are very annoyed, especially the "cuckold" who is envious of Yannick's prominence.

He therefore tries to bargain unsuccessfully; the guard pleasantly entertains the audience while the actors have to learn the new written and printed part: the characters are a doctor, a nurse and a coma patient.

While Yannick is distracted "the cuckold" now "doctor" manages to snatch the gun from him and begins to rant and externalize all the frustration of a narcissist deprived, if only briefly, of the leading role.

With gun in hand he flaunts all his arrogance, not hesitating to slant a mania for grandeur that the instrument evidently facilitates.

He alternates between owning the gun and performing the new comedy, while Yannick is moved and something is about to happen...

A play within a play, a spectator who becomes a protagonist, a weapon that passes from one hand to another, a rather passive audience, an inevitably narcissistic actor, the superiority complex of those who hold the stage, the delirium of omnipotence of those who hold a weapon.

Themes dear to Dupieux, the narcissism of actors or artists, see Daaaaaali, psychopathology and disorder, see Le Daim, the paradoxical pursuit of enjoyment, see Mandibules, power or superpowers as in Fumer fait tousser.

So much so that considering Dupieux's laughter as an end in itself is always a big mistake.

Surely the reference to a play in a popular theater in Moscow interrupted by a commando of Chechen terrorists, is not accidental, as is the play of the parts of "characters in search of an author" or spectators in search of excitement and better yet, it is far from accidental that only an elderly spectator gets up and leaves the theater without anything happening to him despite the gun in the fist of the "out of his mind" of the situation.

Interpretation, play, and reality intersect in the interweaving of the theatrical and social parts that flip between the rebellion of one and the passivity of all the others.

Even where one chooses to go and pay one pauses in the resigned voluntary subservience of those who stay without acting, those who watch without noticing, those who listen without understanding, those who pause without lingering.

Dupieux's shrill, absurd and paradoxical laughter is always hilarious and irresistible but even more bitter, cynical and disenchanted.

09-Dec-2023 by Beatrice