Written and directed by Quentin Dupieux
Starring Jean Dujardin and Adèle Haenel
Languages: French with subtitles
Running time: 1 hour and 17 minutes
Unrated, but it gets a bit vulgar and violent at times

by Audrey Callerstrom

A missing dog, a groan, a tire. Quentin Dupieux, a French electronic musician turned filmmaker, has made a niche for himself by creating surrealist comedies where an object or an animal is often the focus. His third film, Rubber, was about a sentient car tire named Robert who turns homicidal after learning it (he?) is telekinetic. In Deerskin, the object is a jacket, which Georges (Jean Dujardin, The Artist) acquires from an old man. Georges has been figuratively castrated – his wife has kicked him out and frozen their bank account. How does he get his life back? The answer – he stuffs his stupid, pathetic green corduroy jacket into a gas station toilet and spends all his cash (about $8,500 USD) on a 100% deerskin jacket. It’s not an unattractive jacket- for an animal hide that’s several years old, it’s in good condition, with fringe across the chest. But is it as jaw-dropping at first sight as Georges thinks it is? Not really. It feels a little out of place in modern-day France. But he believes it transforms him, that it gives him what he repeatedly and unironically refers to as “killer style.”