Not even five actors are enough to cover Salvador Dalí

The heart of world cinema parades through the Lido of Venice these days. But along with the movies, the festival also projects a global vanity fair. Directors who, in addition to filming a feature, also decide to occupy almost all of its frames (see Maestro or Enea); journalists convinced that their firm matters more than the stars they talk about; passersby dressed up as if they were going to step on the red carpet instead of admiring it from afar; Anyone here can become a divo, even if it’s only for her cell phone, by taking selfies. Ideal context, then, for the premiere of Daaaaaali! —like that, with six a—, Quentin Dupieux’s latest film nonsense, presented out of competition. A wild laugh to ridicule so many delighted to meet. Including the master of surrealism, of course. The difference is that he had at least one or two reasons to be.

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“My greatest masterpiece is my personality,” says Salvador Dalí from the screen. Well, one of them. Because the filmmaker has used up to five performers to cover such a figure. Almost as many facets as the creator claims to have in the same sequence: “Dalí painter, philosopher, character, author…”. All, of course, listed in the third person. Dupieux has even suggested that he wrote the script after connecting with “the cosmic consciousness” of the artist himself, which ordered him to distribute his role among many. “I thought that just one was too classic, boring and insufficient to embody his madness and one day in the bathroom the idea of ​​the monster with many heads occurred to me,” the filmmaker added to the press. Maybe even a quintet falls short. There were a dozen of them at first, until a few of them left the project. In any case, the protagonist is in charge of confusing the issue in the film: “The actor does not exist, he is an invention.”

Quentin Dupieux (center), Edouard Baer and Anais Demoustier, before the presentation of ‘Daaaaaali!’ before the press at the Venice festival. CLAUDIO ONORATI (EFE)

The genie, of course, overwhelms the poor journalist who is trying to make a movie about him. That is what, in theory, the beginning of Dupieux’s work is about. Daaaaaali though! it shows very soon that there is no scheme or line of argument capable of enclosing it. No plot that gives it a certain meaning. It includes stories that never end, a cowboy bent on murdering a priest or a dinner based on worms. He amuses, until he gets tired. And vice versa. There is no more coherent tribute, after all, than a triumph of the grotesque. “The only thing I hate more than children are their drawings,” says the teacher emphatically. Impossible to take anything seriously. Not much less the improbable accent —Castilian?— with which the five Dalís speak French.

For this, and other reasons, the film could enter fully into the controversy that is igniting this edition of the Venice Film Festival about cultural appropriation. All since the Italian actor Piefrancesco Favino criticized the fact that the blockbuster Ferrari cast the American Adam Driver in the lead role, instead of someone native. In Daaaaaali! There is hardly any Spanish. Some allusion to his paintings, such as the reproduction of Necrophilic Fountain flowing from a grand piano that opens the feature. And the scenery inspired by Dalí’s real house in Port Lligat (Girona), which the filmmaker visited on several occasions. He described it, by the way, as “a customized fishing village” with the work of its most famous neighbor. To regret the lack of fidelity to the original of this delirium, however, would seem absurd. Dupieux may not have seen the time: the parody would thus continue even outside the room.

Image from ‘Daaaaaali!’, by Quentin Dupieux.

Not long, actually, since Dalí last appeared in theaters. Dalíland, by Mary Harron, was released in 2022, amid complaints from the painter’s foundation because they had not counted on it. Again, if anything, the portrait called for more than one actor: Ben Kingsley and Ezra Miller. In general, the seventh art has tried with irregular success to summarize his creativity, his eccentric way of being or some collateral episode of his life. There have even been projects that never went beyond the dreamlike, like a version of Dune that Alejandro Jodorowski planned and in which he wanted to have the artist as an actor. Dalí himself, deep down, worked for the cinema: there are The Andalusian Dog and The Golden Age, by Luis Buñuel.

Precisely, the Spanish filmmaker has been cited as one of the influences of Daaaaaali!, along with Monthy Python. Although Dupieux’s game invites you to avoid labels: a whole madness of its own. And with a duration that is also unique for this contest: 77 minutes. Most of the films shown so far, on the other hand, are close to or over two hours. For creative needs, sometimes. Although others invite us to suspect that the real reason had to do with the ego. Above art. What things. How funny.

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