P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#26 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Jan 21, 2015 3:44 pm

Sounds interesting to me, What's the problem -- too much gore?

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#27 Post by swo17 » Wed Jan 21, 2015 3:58 pm

Yes, I suppose, although a lot of it is left to the imagination. You can probably handle it, but I just thought that you might want to know about it going in.

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#28 Post by repeat » Wed Jan 21, 2015 6:15 pm

Actually I find Ce jour-là quite a bit more disturbing (as did a friend of mine who is a lot more sensitive to such things, and had no problems whatsoever with PQ) - I think what makes the horrors in Quinquin bearable is not so much the burlesque humor (although it does give the viewer the chance to view and process them strictly as black comedy - but that would be to miss the point!) than Dumont's overall philosophy and view of these evils as less of an aberration than a necessary part of the way the world is. And with Dumont there is always grace - like he says somewhere, the viewer is violently thrown down only to be consequently lifted even higher up. Also it's important to note that his use of violence and horror has absolutely nothing to do with exploitation (as might sometimes be argued to be the case with the "New French Extremity" etc.), even though it might aim for a certain physical reaction, it's never his ultimate end.

I suppose it's fair to say it's "not for the faint of heart" (although like swo says the grisly stuff is more often implied than graphic), but I'd recommend even them to give it a go. Like I said my friend is definitely "faint of heart", but she found the film absolutely truthful and beautiful and not at all disturbing. All in all I think Dumont's work is one of those rare instances where it might get rough but you'll probably end up the better for it.

(edit: the obvious exception being Twentynine Palms - but remember that Dumont considers it a failure for that very reason...)
Last edited by repeat on Wed Jan 21, 2015 6:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#29 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Jan 21, 2015 6:23 pm

I thought Ce jour la was a hoot -- but may have been biased becuse my glucometer was a co-star....

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#30 Post by swo17 » Wed Jan 21, 2015 7:11 pm

swo17 wrote:Kino have picked it up for distribution and it's supposed to tour theatrically early this year.
It looks like the theatrical run is slim pickings, though the film can also be streamed on Fandor.

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#31 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Jan 21, 2015 9:54 pm

swo17 wrote:It looks like the theatrical run is slim pickings, though the film can also be streamed on Fandor.
Pretty sad. Thus muight show up here as part of the MFA's French Film Festival, but that is generally in July.

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#32 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Jan 22, 2015 8:15 am

repeat, I assume that P'tit Quinquin doesn't have anything on the same level as the couple of graphic shots in L'Humanité of the highly composed, almost painterly (in particular Dumont appears to be alluding to the Gustave Courbet painting The Origin of the World (NSFW)), splayed body of the murdered child early on, which gets paralleled by the main female character placing herself in almost exactly the same position near to the end, but your comments feel like a great description of the Dumont style!
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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#33 Post by repeat » Thu Jan 22, 2015 11:22 am

Actually, you know what - as far as I recall, everything in the film that could be considered "graphic" is visible in the trailer (the cow's ass, the impromptu autopsy, severed head by roadside, female victim on beach)

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#34 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Jan 22, 2015 11:24 am

Any tonal similaritie to Bong's Memories of Murder?

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#35 Post by repeat » Thu Jan 22, 2015 11:26 am

Good call - it didn't cross my mind, but now that you mention it, there's a lot of common ground! (edit: also Memories of Murder is WAY more grisly and disturbing)

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#36 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Jan 22, 2015 11:50 am

I admired Memories of Murder immensely -- but have not yet re-watched it (possibly because too much of it remains seared into my brain, even after many years).

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#37 Post by zedz » Thu Jan 22, 2015 3:27 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote:Any tonal similaritie to Bong's Memories of Murder?
The only similarities are in very general terms of content. And that would be about the same as with any murder mystery with a rural setting. Tonally, they're extremely different, in my opinion.

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#38 Post by repeat » Thu Jan 22, 2015 3:40 pm

More in content than tone, yes, but some of the similarities are actually rather striking, if incidental - anyway I don't think it makes much sense to seriously compare these films. (Besides, I can't think of any contemporaries whose work bears any genuine tonal resemblance to that of Dumont)

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#39 Post by Ashirg » Wed Apr 01, 2015 3:24 pm

Kino Lorber is releasing it on DVD and blu on June 2

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#40 Post by Jeff » Sun May 03, 2015 9:53 pm

It's a shame Kino didn't give this a wider release. Denver was lucky to get one of the few U.S. theatrical runs, but I almost skipped it because I'm not generally a fan of Dumont. It's easily the funniest, weirdest, and most charming film surrounding a series of grisly murders that I can imagine. The cast of mostly first-time actors (many of whom seem to have real-life disabilities that go refreshingly unremarked upon) is fantastic. The DCP I saw was presented as a single 197-minute film with brief title cards delineating the "chapters" that would have been the episodes on French television. I would absolutely tune in for an ongoing series involving these characters (and there was some indication that a successful run might prompt Arte to ask Dumont for a second season), but it works very well as a self-contained film. The three hours and change fly by, and I wanted to spend more time in this community -- even if that meant I might be chopped up and fed to a cow.

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#41 Post by kidc85 » Tue Jun 02, 2015 12:53 pm

It's up on Netflix US for streaming under the moniker LI'L QUINQUIN. They've labelled it as a TV show, but it's the film version. It looks like each of the 'episodes' is marked by a black screen with the episode title on, so it will be pretty easy to watch it episodically. I'm guessing there's no other change between the two versions?

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#42 Post by lefeufollet » Tue Jun 02, 2015 1:06 pm

kidc85 wrote:It's up on Netflix US for streaming under the moniker LI'L QUINQUIN. They've labelled it as a TV show, but it's the film version. It looks like each of the 'episodes' is marked by a black screen with the episode title on, so it will be pretty easy to watch it episodically. I'm guessing there's no other change between the two versions?
I think the only other difference is the broadcast version being 1.78:1 while the theatrical is 2.35:1. What is the AR on Netflix?

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#43 Post by doh286 » Tue Jun 02, 2015 1:17 pm

The AR on Netflix is 2.35:1.

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#44 Post by lefeufollet » Tue Jun 02, 2015 3:16 pm

Thanks!

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#45 Post by kneelzod » Mon Jun 08, 2015 1:57 pm

Jeff wrote:It's a shame Kino didn't give this a wider release. Denver was lucky to get one of the few U.S. theatrical runs, but I almost skipped it because I'm not generally a fan of Dumont. It's easily the funniest, weirdest, and most charming film surrounding a series of grisly murders that I can imagine. The cast of mostly first-time actors (many of whom seem to have real-life disabilities that go refreshingly unremarked upon) is fantastic. The DCP I saw was presented as a single 197-minute film with brief title cards delineating the "chapters" that would have been the episodes on French television. I would absolutely tune in for an ongoing series involving these characters (and there was some indication that a successful run might prompt Arte to ask Dumont for a second season), but it works very well as a self-contained film. The three hours and change fly by, and I wanted to spend more time in this community -- even if that meant I might be chopped up and fed to a cow.
Kino would happily grant a title like QUIN QUIN "a wider release"...it's up to more theaters to take a chance on such a film. Glad you caught it during its brief run in Denver and enjoyed it.

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#46 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Jun 10, 2015 11:09 pm

The subtitles lag (noticeably) on Netflix -- but otherwise this looks quite good.

Very weird and mystifying film, which is often funny (sometimes in a perverse fashion, but not always). I was annoyed by both Quinquin and the police commander at the start, but really grew rather attached to both by the end.

As to the murders:
SpoilerShow
My wife and I guessed that Mr. Lebleu killed his wife and her lover, Lebleu's lover's husband (the motorcycle guy) killed Lebleu and his own uinfaithful wife, and Uncle Dany was connected in some way to the killeing of the singing neighbor girl

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#47 Post by Soothsayer » Thu Jun 11, 2015 2:33 pm

SpoilerShow
I thought it was implied that the neighbor girl committed suicide by choosing to be eaten by pigs after Mohamed was killed.

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#48 Post by feihong » Thu Jun 11, 2015 7:35 pm

Was anyone else bothered by the way the film persistently exploited the ill–fitting, the disabled, and the awkward for its humor? It reminded me a good deal of the Coen Brothers film Fargo. In both movies we're called upon to laugh again and again at how dumb, how odd, or how ugly characters are. Constantly people are pulled out towards the center of the frame with a curved lens, staring straight at us, leading us to regard how awkward these figures are. So often the Inspector's neurological problems––or whatever they are––seem to be worth laughing at. In many cases it seems as if we're meant to laugh at these people because of their disabilities. Lebleu gets many closeups in which we stare at him while his face gradually twitches and contorts. Dany, with his spinning and collapsing, seemed a dispiritingly simple target for the film, and every time we had to watch him spinning and falling down again caused me to cringe.

Very often it seemed as if we were meant to ridicule how crude and amateur the characters are at their various pursuits and ambitions, from the Inspector's assistant's dream of driving like a stuntman to the neighboring girl's singing of the same insipid song, so feebly, so often. The church organist and the church characters are given an enormous amount of screen time, but I feel as if we're meant to look on their efforts to hold a funeral with a certain disdain for their efforts. Equally, it seems as if we're supposed to look at the town cheerleaders as bad amateurs, and their teacher as kind of pathetic, passing as she does as one of the only people in the town with any mediocre sense of sex appeal. That supposed sex appeal seems extremely exploited by the film, in the sense that we're meant to assume her supposed sex appeal has something rather evocative to do with her mysterious murder. The association is never unpacked in any detail, but the manner of display of her corpse is overtly sexualized, and we're encouraged, I think, to think of the murder as a sort of retribution for the character's promiscuity.

I also found the handling of Mohamed's desperation very remote. I mean, it's interesting that these scenes found their way into the film at all, but we are so distanced from Mohamed, and we are led to identify so directly with one of Mohamed's chief tormenters (Lil' Quinquin). Like you, Michael, I found the Inspector and Lil' Quinquin both very sympathetic by the end of the picture, but after the relatively brief time and energy spent on Mohamed and his ostracism, it really didn't sit right with me that we spent so much more time watching Lil' Quinquin clown around rather lamely, and that we spent a great deal of time coming to understand him, when we spent almost no time on Mohamed. Why was the film so interested in Quinquin, by comparison? It reminded me a bit of David Thompson's implied question in the Raging Bull entry of his "Have You Seen...?" book––given Sugar Ray Robinson was in fact the extraordinary figure in the story, the really remarkable champion, who triumphed against truly great odds, why then is the movie about Lamotta? In short, is Lil' Quinquin avoiding or downplaying the better subject––a hard, perceptive look at racism––in favor of the easier one? That might be a little unfair an assertion. But I find myself weighing the unfairness of that suggestion against the palpable unfairness I feel when I think of how the Mohamed story is subsumed into a story about his tormentors sort of wallowing in their own inertia.

And when the movie began to dredge up that old chestnut that the village idiot might be responsible for the murders––thrusting Dany into this rather pat role––I began to feel very cross with the picture, and very tired of watching. It might be that the movie was just too heavy-handed for me. I'm afraid this is the first Bruno Dumont film I've seen, so I don't have a lot to measure it against in that respect. But I wonder if anyone else found it quite so offensive as I did?

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#49 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Jun 11, 2015 11:35 pm

No, Feihong, I felt almost none of these things.

We know the village idiot isn't responsible for most of the murders -- as we see him arrive after the first occurs -- and we are given plenty of explanations pointing away from him.
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The only murder -- if it was murder -- he might be connected to is of the neighbor girl. While she is very depressed by the death of Mohamed, how do you commit suicide by domestic pig? Not sure this can really happen -- but does this matter in the world of the film?
The movie does deal with racism, in its own way -- and I think effectively -- because it isn't preachy at all. One even gets a sense that Quinquin is troubled -- and we know what the police commander thinks (and does).

Is it fair to criticize the film's focus on Quinquin? We are not asked to identify with Quinquin's racism or to approve it. Quite the contrary. Rather we get to see that this initially rather repellent child is a lot more complex than we initially assumed. An overriding theme is not being caught up in appearances (and first impressions).

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Re: P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

#50 Post by zedz » Fri Jun 12, 2015 12:02 am

feihong wrote:Was anyone else bothered by the way the film persistently exploited the ill–fitting, the disabled, and the awkward for its humor? It reminded me a good deal of the Coen Brothers film Fargo. In both movies we're called upon to laugh again and again at how dumb, how odd, or how ugly characters are. Constantly people are pulled out towards the center of the frame with a curved lens, staring straight at us, leading us to regard how awkward these figures are. So often the Inspector's neurological problems––or whatever they are––seem to be worth laughing at. In many cases it seems as if we're meant to laugh at these people because of their disabilities. Lebleu gets many closeups in which we stare at him while his face gradually twitches and contorts. Dany, with his spinning and collapsing, seemed a dispiritingly simple target for the film, and every time we had to watch him spinning and falling down again caused me to cringe.
Yeah, that was a big problem I had with the film. Dumont's similar casting practices in previous films have always been ambiguous enough that I've given him the benefit of the doubt, but in this film it's abundantly clear that we're supposed to be laughing at the disabilities of his actors (it's a comedy, but most of the humour boils down to "these people sure act / look funny!"). Bernard Pruvost seems to be suffering from corea, or the early stages of Parkinson's. Turning that into slapstick is a totally sleazy and callous thing to do, but I suppose Dumont and his apologists will consider it 'edgy'.

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