LOFT FILM FESTIVAL 2024 REVIEW! A lightning-quick painter biopic that you could time with a melting stopwatch is the French art romp Daaaaaali!, written and directed by Quentin Dupieux. Judith Rochant (Anais Demoustier) is a pharmacy tech who has broken into journalism. She lands an interview with the famous painter Salvador Dali (Edouard Baer) and is nervous as hell, as he is known to be difficult. It is true, as when Dali arrives at the hotel and starts walking down the hallway, he announces that he is extremely thirsty and wants plenty of water, sparkling water. Despite just being a few feet away, the hallway stretches out further and further the closer Dali gets, making the journey madly long. When Dali finally sits down for the interview, he finds out there is no camera there to film him. This will not do, and Dali walks out of the interview.
“…lightning quick painter biopic that you could time with a melting stopwatch…”
Judith finds a film producer, Jerome (Romain Duris), who is interested in making the interview into a movie, so they reach out to Dali. Dali (Gilles Lellouche) is busy painting on the beach, with misfit artist models posing for him. A phone is brought to him, but the cord isn’t long enough, so he has to take the call in the house. Dali steps through a tunnel in the beach rocks and comes out the other end at his villa, feeling like a new man (Jonathan Cohen). He takes the phone call and listens to Judith’s offer. Dali only agrees once he is assured that he will be filmed with the biggest camera in the world. But then Dali spies an ancient Dali (Didier Flamand) in a wheelchair, staring at him through the window. When Dali runs out to look for himself, he is gone…
Right out the gate, Dupieux’s Dali pic pulls out way ahead of Dali Land, the Ben Kingsley Dali pic, though that lead is lost closer to the finish line. Where Dupieux gets it is to Dali up the film itself with two scoops of surrealism. Right from the endless entrance down the hallway, the film shows how reality would twist around Dali wherever he walked. This is crucial to a Dali flick because without the revolutionary content of his paintings worked into the atmosphere, all we are left with is the mustache. I got really excited when I saw the model posing scene for Dali’s latest, suggesting he lived in some weirdo place where his subjects were painting from life. Also, the multiple Dalis work well, though I am not sure there is a difference between them other than they are different ages.
"…ends up being more cough syrup than magic mushrooms."
