He's a man who thinks he's talked too much. A few days before his 13^th feature film, Le Deuxième Acte (The Second Act), opened the 77^th Cannes Film Festival on May 14, Quentin Dupieux issued a press release announcing that he wished to take a vow of silence. "Recently, the pace of releases has accelerated considerably for me, and I've accumulated, without realizing it, media time probably greater than the duration of my 12 films combined."

He then lifted a corner of the veil on his latest work, starring Léa Seydoux, Louis Garrel Raphaël Quenard and Vincent Lindon, which hit French cinemas on the heels of its Cannes screening. "The film, which is very talkative, says in well-chosen words everything I want to say, and already contains an extremely clear analysis of its own," he said. Before concluding: "You'll notice that this text is as boring as hell, but the film in question is much less so. Yet more striking proof that it's time for me to shut my trap."

Although he has decided to "keep his mouth shut" for the time being, Dupieux is nonetheless French cinema's fastest-rising director with 13 feature films in just 17 years, including five in the last two years (Incroyable mais Vrai (Incredible but True), Fumer Fait Couser (Smoking Causes Coughing), Yannick, Daaaaaalí! and Le Deuxième Acte). No one else can say the same. The same zany writing features in all his films. The director has staged astonishing "heroes": a car tire that comes to life and becomes a murderer (Rubber, 2010), a character obsessed with his fringed jacket (Le Daim (Deerskin), 2019), a Salvador Dalí embodied by six different actors (Daaaaaalí!, 2023) and an audience member of a play who interrupts a performance (Yannick, 2023).

This strangeness is met with a growing audience, with the director's last two films each grossing half a million admissions. Numerous leading actors have filmed with him: Anaïs Demoustier, Pio Marmaï, Blanche Gardin, Gilles Lellouche, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Eric Judor, Ramzy Bedia, Alain Chabat and Benoît Magimel. Off the radar, without having attended film school or frequented cinephile circles, but by making a name for himself in electronic music, where he was known under the pseudonym Mr. Oizo, Dupieux, who has just turned 50, has become a heavyweight in French cinema.

His speed of execution has become a strength, and intense producer Hugo Sélignac summed it up best, by comparing him to Jul, the extremely productive rapper from Marseille: "Sometimes, Raphaël [Quenard] and I laugh at him and tell him he's the Jul of cinema. But, in fact, it's not a joke. He reminds me of those French rappers who are able to release, at the very least, one album a year and who therefore manage to stay connected to the reality of society. Quentin's super-steady pace in the cinema allows him to do the same."

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