Annual Top Films Lists

Top 150 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2019: #76. Le daim – Quentin Dupieux

Published on January 3, 2019

Le daim

For his seventh feature, French director Quentin Dupieux continues his particular brand of black comedy with Le daim, starring Oscar winner Jean Dujardin, celebrated French actress Adèle Haenel, and Youssef Hadji. Produced by Thomas Verhaeghe and Mathieu Verhaeghe for Atelier de Production (who produced his 2018 feature Keep an Eye Out), the project was also coproduced by Arte France Cinema. Dupieux’s early cult item Rubber (2010) played in Critics’ Week, while his English language Wrong (2012) competed in Sundance’s World Dramatic line-up and 2013’s Wrong Cops (which featured Marilyn Manson) played at Sundance as a work-in-progress before screening later that year in Locarno. 2014’s Reality played in the Horizons sidebar in Venice. Keep an Eye Out opened in France in July 2018 and had a North American premiere in Fantastic Fest.

Gist: Dupieux’s script finds Dujardin’s George becoming obsessed with a 100% suede jacket, so much so it eventually costs him his life’s savings and forces him to turn to a life of crime.

Release Date/Prediction: Dupieux went into production the first quarter of 2018. With Dujardin and Haenel headlining, we’re assuming Le diam will find Dupieux breaking into one of the last slots in Berlin.

Nicholas Bell

Los Angeles based Nicholas Bell is IONCINEMA.com's Chief Film Critic and covers film festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, Cannes and TIFF. He is part of the critic groups on Rotten Tomatoes, The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA), the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and GALECA. His top 3 for 2021: France (Bruno Dumont), Passing (Rebecca Hall) and Nightmare Alley (Guillermo Del Toro). He was a jury member at the 2019 Cleveland International Film Festival.