“In Quentin Dupieux’s cinema, absurdity is not merely a break from logic but a self-contained coherence that defines his unique style. Through delirious situations and disconnected characters, Dupieux builds universes where the illogical takes on an internal logic, challenging expectations and destabilizing the viewer’s perception. His films create a space where nonsense becomes a language to explore the boundaries of storytelling and reality itself.”
Quentin Dupieux, a French filmmaker known for his irreverent and absurdist comedies, has crafted a unique style that challenges the narrative and aesthetic conventions of contemporary cinema. Renowned for films like Rubber (2010), Deerskin (2019), and Smoking Causes Coughing (2022), Dupieux has built a career around the exploration of absurdity and the surreal, guiding audiences into worlds where logic and common sense are replaced by the illogical and the unexpected.
One of the most striking features of Dupieux’s cinema is his ability to use absurdity as a narrative tool. From Rubber, where a tire comes to life and kills without explanation, to Smoking Causes Coughing, featuring a group of ex-superheroes facing baffling situations, Dupieux pushes cinema into uncharted territory. The idea that nothing needs to make sense is a recurring principle in his work—one that serves both as his greatest strength and his main challenge. In his films, absurdity is not merely a comedic device; it disrupts traditional narrative norms. Dupieux plays with viewer expectations: in many of his stories, characters face situations that cannot be resolved through logic, resulting in confusion and a peculiar sense of humor. This humor does not rely on easy laughs, but rather on the dissonance between what is expected and what actually occurs, inviting the audience to question not only cinematic conventions but also the very logic of life.
Unlike other filmmakers who also delve into absurdity, Dupieux often infuses his stories with a dehumanized tone. His characters rarely show deep emotional development, and the situations they encounter lack any clear purpose. In Deerskin, for example, the protagonist’s obsession with a deerskin jacket reveals an emotional detachment that borders on the disturbing. This indifference toward the surreal creates a dystopian atmosphere, far removed from the warmth or charm found in other absurdist filmmakers. In this sense, his style echoes the work of David Lynch, whose films—such as Mulholland Drive (2001)—explore the surreal from a psychological perspective. However, unlike Lynch, who delves into the traumas and complexities of the human psyche, Dupieux keeps his characters almost entirely disconnected from the world around them, as if logic and emotion were irrelevant in his universe. This lack of empathy reinforces the sense that Dupieux’s world is one where the rules of reality are not merely questioned, but have completely collapsed.
Dupieux’s cinema also draws parallels with the surrealism of Luis Buñuel. Films like Un Chien Andalou (1929) and L’Age d’Or (1930) defied the social and cultural norms of their time by creating a logic of bewilderment and contradiction. Like Buñuel, Dupieux uses absurdity to challenge social constructs and the inherent discomfort of human existence. However, Dupieux diverges from Buñuel’s surrealism by avoiding direct social critique or moral confrontation. Instead, he employs absurdity as a tool to destabilize narrative expectations and the very notion of reality. Smoking Causes Coughing, for instance, can be seen as a contemporary and un-dramatized take on Buñuel’s surrealist strategies, where the parody of superheroes does not attack social norms but rather highlights the absurdity of traditional action film narratives.
In comparison to Jean-Pierre Jeunet, known for Amélie (2001) and Delicatessen (1991), one can say that Jeunet is a master at blending absurdity with charm, creating worlds in which characters engage with the absurd in a tender and whimsical manner. While Jeunet uses surrealism to evoke wonder and emotional exploration, Dupieux employs it to disorient the viewer, often guiding them through worlds where logic has no place. In Amélie, for example, surrealism appears in the small, magical details of everyday life, whereas in Mandibles (2020), Dupieux takes absurdity to a more explicit level by presenting two characters who train a giant fly with no explanation whatsoever. Here, Dupieux avoids Jeunet’s nostalgia or warmth and instead emphasizes the eerie and the unexpected.
The influence of Monty Python is another key reference when discussing Dupieux’s humor. The Monty Python members are known for their ability to craft absurd comedy that transcends conventional formats and challenges audience expectations. Films like Life of Brian (1979) and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) are filled with absurd situations that defy traditional logic—one of the defining traits of Dupieux’s cinema as well. However, there is an important distinction: while the Pythons focused more explicitly on generating comedic situations, Dupieux does so with a darker and often more disconcerting tone.
In Deerskin (2019), the protagonist’s obsession with his deerskin jacket becomes the core of a type of humor that avoids easy laughs, instead pushing the viewer into a state of discomfort. This approach deviates from the lighter, more comedic intent of the Pythons, as Dupieux creates an atmosphere in which absurdity is also unsettling and often deliberately strange. So, while Monty Python focused on subverting comedic and social conventions with irony and absurdity, Dupieux introduces an existential dimension to absurdity, where humor merges with confusion and unease.
One of the recurring devices in Dupieux’s filmography is the construction of narratives that defy traditional causality. Incredible but True (2022) takes this idea to the extreme by presenting a story in which a couple discovers a strange feature in their new home: a basement that allows them to time travel—but with an absurd condition. Instead of offering a rational explanation, the film leans into the viewer’s sense of bewilderment, much like Wrong (2012), in which a man loses his dog and is drawn into a chain of inexplicable events. This use of illogic is not gratuitous, but instead reflects a worldview in which social structures, emotions, and identity are malleable and susceptible to unpredictable transformations. Mandibles (2020), for example, follows two friends who find a giant fly and decide to train it to make money—an absurd premise that Dupieux handles with a naturalism that emphasizes the absurdity of everyday life itself.
Although absurdism has been present in Dupieux’s work from the very beginning—such as in Rubber (2010), where a killer tire gains consciousness—his more recent films show a growing sophistication in handling the illogical. Daaaaaali! represents a step forward in his exploration of surrealism, approaching a real figure from a fragmented, anachronistic perspective. Smoking Causes Coughing is a satire of superheroes and classical narrative structure, while Incredible but True dives deeper into absurdity as a mechanism for revealing the arbitrariness of time and identity. In this sense, Dupieux has also refined his direction of actors, achieving performances that oscillate between hyperrealism and caricature. His characters often function as capsules of humanity inserted into chaotic universes—figures trying to make sense of what is, by definition, nonsensical. This reinforces his exploration of absurdity as an existential condition, where meaninglessness becomes the very core of experience.
Beyond his individual work, Dupieux’s cinema dialogues with a broader tradition of contemporary absurdism. In a cinematic world where realism still dominates narrative conventions, Dupieux’s work aligns with directors like Yorgos Lanthimos, whose films also challenge the rules of conventional logic. Films like The Lobster (2015) share with Dupieux’s universe a structure of arbitrary rules that characters accept unquestioningly, generating uncomfortable humor and a sense of estrangement in the viewer. At the same time, Dupieux’s use of absurdity differs from that of other contemporary filmmakers in his playful approach and exploration of the banal as a source of the surreal. While in the work of Lanthimos or Charlie Kaufman, absurdity is often linked to deep existential anguish, Dupieux leans into a lightness that turns nonsense into an enjoyable experience.
Quentin Dupieux’s cinema is a laboratory of the absurd, where the rules of the real world are optional and humor becomes a tool to expose the fragility of everyday logic. His latest films have consolidated his style, exploring new ways of narrating the irrational and refining the use of surreal humor. Through fragmented narrative structures, characters trapped in twisted logics, and a deliberate use of the illogical, Dupieux has not only challenged viewer expectations but also redefined the limits of contemporary absurdist cinema. His body of work demonstrates that the illogical can be a valid way of interpreting reality—one in which nonsense, ultimately, is the only certainty.
