Dahl: ‘Something didn’t work’… these 2 stars left this film along with Jonathan Cohen and Gilles Lelouch

What is it about? The French journalist meets Salvador Dali several times for a documentary project.

Dali with many faces

Five actors (Gilles Lelouch, Eduard Baer, ​​Jonathan Cohen, Pio Marmay and Didier Flamand) give their features to the Spanish artist Daaaaali!. Initially, there were supposed to be even more performers (Pierre Nin and Alain Chabat were announced as part of the cast when filming began), but some of them spontaneously jumped on board. “Very naturally, almost, they felt they had nothing to bring to Dali. That something wasn’t working, that they were stuck.”The director confides.

Casting the same role to several actors allowed Quentin Dupierre to crack the idea of ​​a biopic: “In a movie like this, everybody’s waiting for a performance. How is this guy going to play this guy that everybody knows? It can be amazing sometimes. But ten minutes. No more. And then what do we do? Mix in Dahl and suggest some actors to play him. , it remains fun. We can’t get tired of it. We’re always surprised.”

Note that Nin is one of the people Dupier thanks in the end credits.

A non-biographical film

Yes! is none other than a Salvador Dali biopic, the theme of the film is the artist’s inability to say. Quentin Dupier emphasizes: Dali is everywhere and nowhere. When I was dreaming about this film, I felt very quickly that we should not make a film about Dali, but with Dali. I tried to find a form of freedom that his works inspired me. Painting school, explaining his frustration, his ambivalence, photographing the artist at work, I’m not interested in that.”

“I almost like Dalí the man, the communication genius more than Dalí the artist. I like the way he was constantly trying to escape his image by playing with it. A film homage to Dalí, that’s what it is. A non-film. About Dalí for a guy who never wanted to be put in a box.”

Information about Dali

The film opens with a shot of one of his paintings, Necrophilic fountain. Opening the film with this painting is a way to get the audience back to their work and give them the rules of the game. Viewer Warning: “We enter a world where pianos are endless fountains, where trees grow, in the background. golden landscape »”The director explains.

But beyond this openness, the references to the Spanish artist’s work are not straightforward. This is more about the details: “It would be foolish to remake his works. The more interested I became, the more I imagined the world that could give these works. It was as if Dalí lived in his paintings. The idea that the most beautiful work of Dalí’s art is his person.”

In cinemas in 2024: here are the 10 most anticipated comedies! Cocorico, Ducobu 5, Operation Portugal 2…

Buñuel and Monty Python

The film is nourished by the cinema of Luis Buñuel, but also by the cinema of Monty Python. Quentin Dupier explains: “There is a freedom in their films that has always delighted me. It is a comedy that is both demanding and completely silly. As with Dalí and Buñuel, there is a search for a new language, a rejection of decorum, a taste. Provocation, but also a form of tenderness, of humanity that touches me. “.

At the movies: Quentin Dupierre Dahl… Why should we see this crazy movie with Edward Baer and Jonathan Cohen?

why drink

For Quentin Dupierre, there is Dali “Utopia that disappeared”. He specifies: “As a man and as an artist. When I think about him, I see a world where art is at the center. Where artists are at the heart of society, we see them on television, in newspapers. They are not afraid. To be provocative, absurd, even embarrassing. Dali sometimes said completely stupid things, we We shrugged it off and moved on. I show it in the film. But art has disappeared from our daily lives.”

Daaaaali!, tried to present a dialogue between cinema and the artist and pay him a modest but crazy and free tribute.