Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
A man's obsession with owning the designer deerskin jacket of his dreams leads him to turn his back on his humdrum life in the suburbs, blow his life savings, and even turn him to crime.
Deerskin is a genuinely singular piece of French absurdist horror-comedy. Dupieux's tight, deadpan concept — a man's total psychological surrender to a jacket's supposed 'uniqueness' — is executed with an unmistakable voice that few filmmakers could replicate. Jean Dujardin delivers a remarkable, committed performance that anchors the film's strange tonal register, oscillating between menace and farce without ever tipping into parody. The cinematography is functional and purposeful rather than visually arresting, serving the deliberately flat, alienated aesthetic. The plot is deliberately thin by design, which is both its strength as high-concept provocation and a mild limitation as sustained narrative. The ending is satisfyingly bleak and circular but not especially surprising given the film's internal logic. A genuinely distinctive oddity.