Film Shapes

This surreal film about the Surrealist painter Salvador Dali is another oddity from the abstruse Quentin Dupieux. He's never short of a batty idea but the strange thing about this film is that it might be his most straightforward work, at least in the subject matter. A print journalist, Judith (Anaïs Demoustier) is chasing an interview with the legendary artist but has trouble tying him down, particularly if she can't provide a film crew. Dali needs to be seen, not just written about. The story flirts with mortality and fame and is multi-layered in its structure. Dali is played, at different times, by Edouard Baer, Jonathan Cohen, Gilles Lellouche, Pio Marmaï and Didier Flammand, and if there is any method to the madness of who plays him when, it was lost on me. It reminded me of the Dylan film by Todd Haynes, I'm Not There , in this respect, though that was more measured and didn't jump back and forth, if memory serves. There's also the little matter of the unrelia...