In theaters since Wednesday, “Yannick” is the new film by prolific Quentin Dupieux. The French director shot this comedy in record time and without telling anyone!
What is it about ? In the middle of a performance of the play “Le Cocu”, a very bad boulevard, Yannick gets up and interrupts the show to take the evening back in hand…
A surprise movie
It was in June 2023, just a few weeks before its release, that Yannick was presented by Quentin Dupieux on social networks. This feature film was shot in secret in six days. The director says: “I wanted to do things differently, outside the classic production lines. I make one film a year, with preparation over several months and a form of comfort. There, I wanted to go back to my first love, that is- to say to the impossible film. I still have this thing that burns deep inside me, this taste for film that shouldn’t exist. Yannick is like an exit from the road in my filmography, he’s an object apart.”
Yannick
In addition, he made the choice to shoot this film in secret because he was preparing Daaaaaali at the same time! and didn’t want to scare off the financial partners by telling them he was going to direct another film first. There was also for him the pleasure of surprising the public.
PRODUCTION WORKSHOP/CHI-FOU-MI PRODUCTIONS/QUENTIN DUPIEUX 2023
Genesis
It was after the screening of Smoking makes you cough at the Cannes Film Festival that Quentin Dupieux had the idea for Yannick, as he tells the Three Colors website : “When you are the creator of a film, the pleasure is diluted as you watch it. And if this Cannes screening was a great moment with the whole cast, I was deeply bored, because I knew the film by heart.” However, during the sketch in which Blanche Gardin and Raphaël Quenard appear, the director felt “something special” and wanted to write for the actor. “I proposed to him to make a film together, something free, between us. I wrote the screenplay quite quickly in stride. Blanche Gardin and Pio Marmai joined the project, and we shot very quickly.”
Quentin Dupieux is not the first nor the last of the directors to have been conquered by Raphaël Quenard. 2023 is definitely his year, with I will always see your faces, Dog of the breakage, Cash on Netflix, or even On the branch (in theaters since July 26). The actor has also returned to the microphone of AlloCiné on this sumptuous year.
PRODUCTION WORKSHOP/CHI-FOU-MI PRODUCTIONS/QUENTIN DUPIEUX 2023
Realism
Unlike most of Quentin Dupieux’s films, Yannick does not rely on an absurd or fantastical element. The director says: “I’ve made so many films that are based on absurd principles with pirouettes and temporal games that it suddenly became surprising to make one in which there was not all that. I wanted to be a naked, without effects, to explore this issue of real time, which is a very dangerous area in cinema. There are barely two or three ellipses in the film, it’s extremely rare. There is no artifices, and the rhythm of the dialogues also has a realistic aspect.”
Free for the Yannicks!
The film is accessible free of charge to all people who bear the first name of Yannick during its first week of operation. The production has indeed decided to offer a free place to all the Yannicks who have previously completed an online form.