Deerskin (2021)

Unsurprisingly, Cineworld weren't showing Quentin Dupieux's latest film about a man who becomes obsessed with his newly purchased deerskin jacket, to the point that he commits murder(s) in a bid to become the only person on the planet to own a jacket. I managed to see this at my favourite cinema, Chichester Cinema at New Park in West Sussex and it was quite an experience. Dupieux is no stranger to the absurd, he is possibly best known for Rubber (2010) a film about a killer tyre. Deerskin is a different beast however; although very darkly comedic, the way in which the film is played completely straight faced is somewhat unnerving, to the point that when I laughed, I was worried that Jean Dujardin (brilliantly playing lead character Georges) was looking directly at me. Deerskin is only seventy seven minutes long, but it uses every second of it to produced a constant sense of unease, despite the film being highly amusing. Dujardin is excellently assisted by Adele Haenel, who he cons into giving him money to complete his 'film.' There are shades of Peter Strickland's In Fabric (2018) not just because of the potential murderous items of clothing, but because the two films are so tonally similar in terms of dark humour. On a personal level, somewhat bizarrely, the tassels of Georges' jacket reminded me very much of the leather tassels hanging from a leather bag on the front cover of Prurient's 2015 album Frozen Niagara Falls. The reason this resonated (apart from the fact I've recently been listening to a lot of Prurient) was because of the difficult nature of Prurient's work. It's very hard to classify, it can be difficult to understand, but it makes the music no less striking and impressive. Just like Prurient's output, Dupieux has created something highly original and hard to classify, and it makes for essential viewing. 8.1/10