Daaaaaalí!

The eccentric, prolific French 'Mandibles' director pays tribute to Salvador Dali in a film that Buñuel surely would have appreciated. Salvador Dalí is walking down a hotel corridor. A hotel corridor is being walked down by Salvador Dalí. In a hotel, there is a corridor down which Salvador Dalí walks. So begins — and begins and begins – Quentin Dupieux‘s giddy, glitchy altogether delightful “Daaaaaali!” (imagine the title delivered by a practiced yodeler in the middle of a morning gargle). It’s the oldest and lo-fi-est of cinematic tricks: a few simple cuts make it seem like a hotel hallway’s finite, solid space is elastic, stretching from the lift doors into carpeted absurdity. Like the film as a whole, the gag gets funnier as it gets sillier, and becomes more of a homage to the surrealist painter’s ability to warp the reality around him, the more drunken its time-loop chronology.