In France, the concept of irony is referred to as “deuxième degré” (second degree), where the “premier degré” is the literal or surface meaning, which can be twisted as audiences read an entirely different, often contrary meaning into the material. But the game doesn’t necessarily stop there. There is also “troisième degré,” “quatrième degré” and so on, as deep as you want to go.
For absurdist trickster Quentin Dupieux (whose films “Deerskin” and “Rubber” have found a cult following), “The Second Act” presents a frivolous fun-house mirror, in which actors Léa Seydoux, Louis Garrel, Vincent Lindon and Raphaël Quenard play actors playing actors in a pointless romantic comedy. They all know they’re making a bad movie, and one by one, they keep interrupting the shoot to air their personal grievances. But that’s only the beginning in a slender meta-textual doodle selected to kick off the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
When something seemingly unscripted occurs, the director calls “cut,” and they all break character and begin to critique the day’s shoot. One of the stars hits on another. Two of the cast walk off hand in hand. Are they Léa Seydoux, Louis Garrel, Vincent Lindon and Raphaël Quenard in this moment? No, they’re still play-acting, and yet half the joke comes in knowing that a quartet of A-list French stars have agreed to tickle their own images in this way (for example, guess which among them is playing gay).
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At one point, operating at what is at least the fourth degree, Seydoux declares, “Reality is reality. Period.” Dupieux has been toying with self-conscious devices since at least 2014, when his film “Reality” hit the Venice Film Festival. I hated that movie — an aggressively unfunny amalgam of sketches in which Alain Chabat played an aspiring filmmaker in search of the perfect groan — though contrarian French culture mag Les Inrockuptibles just ranked it as Dupieux’s best. You say tomato, I say rotten.
Still, I’ve been intrigued enough by Dupieux to keep up with his singular brand of surrealism (the films typically run between 70 and 80 minutes), and he’s only gotten better with practice. Or else, through repeated exposure, we’ve figured out the weird thing he does and adapted to appreciate it. Either way, the prolific director’s 2023 output, “Daaaaaali!” and “Yannick,” were accomplished artistic satires, setting up the kind of meta shtick he’s toying with here.
“Yannick” centers around a blue-collar worker who interrupts a boring “boulevard” play he’s paid to attend, ordering the actors (at gunpoint) to make it more interesting. Or, as Edouard Baer (one of six actors Dupieux cast in the role of Salvador Dalí in “Daaaaaali!”) postulates, “No one is an actor. It’s a nonexistent profession. ‘Actor’ is a total invention.” The Surrealist painter goes on to complain about the “unbearable” and “appalling banality” of the film-within-a-film.
Is Dupieux bored with movies? Clearly not, or he wouldn’t keep making them, but he seems to recognize (more than most) that audiences have gotten savvy to the codes and clichés, and so he seeks to subvert them, to weaponize convention against itself, while folding in barbs about the contemporary state of cinema. For example, if the scenes sampled here sound lousy, why not imply that this movie was the first to be written and directed entirely by artificial intelligence?
Improvising the dialogue for a long walk-and-talk scene in which David (Garrel) asks Willy (Quenard) to seduce his clingy girlfriend Florence (Seydoux), the actors riff about political correctness, “cancel culture” and trans identity. “You can’t say that!” David abruptly interrupts Willy. “We’re being filmed.” Cute, except the English subtitles have softened the dialogue (the word “travelo” does not mean “trans,” though sensitivity has scrubbed its equivalent from English usage).
Willy’s lines are meant to be offensive (as David/Garrel makes clear), and it may be instructive for moviegoers to note who around them laughs and at what “level.” The third-degree payoff to that exchange comes nearly an hour later in the film. In the meantime, the characters bicker constantly, as when Guillaume (Lindon) storms out of his first scene, complaining that he’s lost faith in the dying art form … until his agent calls to say he’s been cast in Paul Thomas Anderson’s next film.
The problem with irony at any level is that it makes sincerity almost impossible to judge. The resulting ambiguity serves as a cornerstone of zoomer humor, where the concepts of meta-irony and post-irony obscure the author’s intent so completely that audiences can interpret the material however they like. Some take offense, while others see the too-far elements as deliberate subversions of upsetting concepts. Alas, Dupieux doesn’t take anything too far. If anything, he falls short, getting stuck in the infinite loop of his own cleverness.
Alas, breaking the fourth wall is hardly new. Oliver Hardy did it constantly, and Olsen and Johnson took it to new heights in 1941’s “Hellzapoppin’.” Meanwhile, with “The Second Act,” it’s astonishing how long it takes the strategy to get laughs. The breakthrough comes when the extra playing the bartender at The Second Act (the roadside pub where most of the movie takes place) shuffles nervously over to the table with a bottle of wine. Jokes work best when they surprise, so suffice to say, Dupieux milks it for a good 20 minutes.
Oddly enough, considering the film’s tight running time, practically every scene overstays its welcome, including the otherwise smart final shot — an inspired end punctuation, stretched out like all those “a”’s in “Daaaaaali!” Dupieux’s strategy seems to be flipping or repeating certain punchlines for fresh effect, which is fine for a while, until you realize that neither “The Second Act” nor those second-degree readings have much to say.
