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A new outfit has real power. Clothes can rejuvenate our spirit, change our walk into a strut or send us, sobbing, to Peloton.com, in hopes they might one day fit. Rarely, however, does something from the closet turn us into a full-blown serial killer. But that’s what a jacket manages to do, bitingly, in the …
A new outfit has real power.
Clothes can rejuvenate our spirit, change our walk into a strut or send us, sobbing, to Peloton.com, in hopes they might one day fit. Rarely, however, does something from the closet turn us into a full-blown serial killer.
But that’s what a jacket manages to do, bitingly, in the French comedy “Deerskin,” starring Jean Dujardin. The Oscar winner plays a wimp named Georges, who tosses his gross, green corduroy number into a rest-stop toilet and heads to an ominous mountain home to purchase some masculine new duds.
“Meet the beast,” says the man who put the item up for sale online. “One hundred percent deerskin.”
Georges looks ridiculous in the “Wild Wild West” wear — another title for this movie could be “Le Midlife Crisis” — but he loves it, and the clothes quickly consume him. Soon, the deerskin even begins talking, hatching a plan to become the only jacket left in the world. Georges takes up the challenge and brings along his digital camera to make a movie of his exploits.
But asking folks to rip off their suit as he films them soon morphs into asking folks to rip off their suit as he slays them. Especially clever, and horrific, is the inventive way he MacGyvers a ceiling fan into a machete.
Writer-director Quentin Dupieux’s film is arguably a horror-satire, but it’s always as calm and cool as a yogi. Indeed, while the setup and delivery are very dry and very funny, “Deerskin” never becomes campy, unlike the recent, differently awesome inanimate-object comedy “Bad Hair,” about a killer weave.
The same is true of Dujardin’s emotionally amorphous Georges. We learn very few specific details about this somewhat monotonous guy, and yet that vagueness makes him and his quest more relatable. For some, the deerskin jacket might be a Harley-Davidson bike, or an above-ground pool.
As we are learning all too well these days, going crazy can lead to some crazy purchases.
