Actor and director Albert Dupontel is back with his new film: Adieu les cons. For his seventh feature film, the filmmaker offers a funny and touching human adventure carried by the talent of Virginie Efira. The rest of the cast includes himself, Nicolas Marié and Jackie Berroyer. Adieu les cons is a total success, which mixes genres with a lot of mastery.
A film perfectly anchored in Albert Dupontel's filmography
Goodbye idiots is pure Dupontel. A new vintage that fits perfectly into the logic of his career. His style, his personality, his unique approach, give all his soul to Adieu les cons, a real success, as much in writing as in directing. Albert Dupontel reuses the clichés of his style: a sometimes cartoonish staging; offbeat characters, on the margins of their society, unsuitable; a writing that mixes comedy and drama; while offering some social reflections on modern civilization. Fans of his genre will be conquered, his detractors will be neglected. Albert Dupontel once again highlights his appetite for the frantic pace, constantly offering impactful visual finds. His exuberant camera films with verve the tribulations of his magnificent losers, protagonists lost in their solitude, their social and personal fracture, their inability to adapt to the mores of an increasingly harsh and violent society. Dupontel's great strength is also his ability to borrow from his elders (the Coen brothers, Robert Rodriguez, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Michel Gondry, Wes Anderson, Jacques Tati and of course Terry Gilliam) but without ever copying them. Always infusing his own DNA, he offers inimitable and totally unique films.
One of the best movies of 2020
It's quite simple, Adieu les cons is certainly one of the best French films of this poor year 2020. Albert Dupontel is in full possession of his means and thus offers a rhythm of surgical precision. A crescendo of emotions quite impressive. After an introduction a little timid, but which places the elements and the context effectively, Adieu les cons continues to gain emotional scope, power, to finish in a superb apotheosis, without concession. A brutal, radical conclusion, which projects a middle finger to a perverted society, which abandons the poorest, and chooses to remain blind to poverty. A social and economic model that is in its death throes, and that does not allow the individual to find his account, diluted in an oppressive and unshakable fuzzy mass. Albert Dupontel, with his usual absurdity, tells the meanders of an administrative company that bites its tail. A society that treats the prolo, the official, the infirm, the old, the woman as "the dregs of humanity". He denounces a reality dominated by money, without ever falling into pathos or moralization. Via a very pretty scene, he also criticizes mass urbanization, capitalism to excess, which destroys small businesses, independence, culture and identity. It's brilliant and never in forcing. A rebellious fire against the established order, against the great authorities, against the hierarchy of Men, and against the great powers. And he materializes all this with a lot of poetry, like the time of a moment, where the character of the Dupontel hacks an entire building.
Goodbye idiots shares a lot of emotions
Adieu les cons is a very poetic film, very human, which gives off a lot of emotions. If Dupontel loses a little provocation compared to his other films, he gains a lot in wisdom and emotion. The naughty kid has calmed down, and offers passages carried by a pure, spontaneous, and truly gripping emotion. Adieu les cons is driven by Dupontel's usual burlesque energy, but also by a new emotion , where he highlights people's sensitivity, their traumas, their memories, their regrets, with great tenderness. Aided by brilliant black humour, Adieu les cons mixes genres with great mastery and makes its viewers go from laughter to tears with disconcerting simplicity. It is certainly his most moving film, whose accuracy impresses. Virginie Efira is also incredibly precise, and demonstrates once again that she can be a brilliant actress. Albert Dupontel surpasses himself and offers a corrosive comedy with touching romanticism, a delirious and moving film, which tells with humor and sensitivity the ravages and aberrations of the modern world. The leading duo exhibits an alchemy that works perfectly, in a poetic and modern reinterpretation of Bonnie & Clyde. Finally, Dupontel does not hesitate to offer some unexpected and hilarious cameos. In short, run to see Goodbye idiots ! Big slap that Goodbye Cons. Dupontel signs a film very rooted in his cinematographic style, which skilfully plays between comic springs and emotional springs. It's funny, touching, and extremely well paced. https://youtu.be/9uotsv-vf6I