At office ! : Hilarious Poelvoorde and Ludig (Review)

Quentin Dupieux lets go of the LA palm trees for French custody, while remaining damn lit.

France.TV program several films by Quentin Dupieux, visible both on television and in replay. Tonight, time for his police comedy At office !, good delirium very inspired by the dark and absurd humor of Bertrand Blier. When it was released in the cinema, during the summer of 2018, it was very popular with Première. Here is our review.

The poster pays tribute to Fear in the city with Bébel, the beige photo refers to the aesthetics of seventies thrillers, but At office !, Quentin Dupieux’s film is not a pastiche. The author of Steak And Reality only starts from the detective genre to deconstruct it, cracking its codes in its own theatrical and absurd way. If you’re hoping for car races, gunfights or femme fatales, run away. The promise of the spectacular is defused by the filmmaker-musician, who takes pleasure in taking the title literally: at the post, we will therefore stay. To chat. And at length. Dupieux in fact imagines a police custody situation in which Commissioner Buron (Benoît Poelvoorde) cooks Fugain (Grégoire Ludig), a man strangely less concerned by the murder he is suspected of having committed than by his stomach.

At office ! – Quentin Dupieux: “For me, Poelvoorde is an old Labrador”

Comic Vista

The mustachioed nonchalance of Ludig opposed to the nicotine zeal of a Poelvoorde on fire (the smoke he inhales also comes out of his belly through a hole), quickly creates sparks. They intensify in the presence of a third thief, Philippe, a one-eyed cop with a hair in his hand played by the hilarious Marc Fraize (seen in Problems) : in charge of “keep an eye” on Fugain, he will end up prematurely and literally plastered. His jubilant oratorical jousts are replaced by a clever embedding of mise en abimes, a guilty pleasure of the director of Non-Film. The meta mechanics then take hold, without suffocating themselves, because they are overwhelmed by the comical vision of a golden cast.

The theory that kills on Au Poste! by Quentin Dupieux