Keep an Eye Out

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!