"Au poste!" is a Belgian/French co-production from 2018 that was written and directed by Quentin Dupieux and maybe you know the name maybe you don't. However, unless you are really young, maybe you still remember this little yellow creature nack Flat Eric who had a really big techno hit song like 20 years ago almost now I believe and the man behind this was Quentin Dupieux. So pretty special to see he has turned into a really successful filmmaker over the years that also the big names want to work with. I will get to the cast later on. First still about the basics, I would like to say that this is really not a long film at slightly under 75 minutes and it is a fairly unusual runtime that you don't see too often. Still it is not uncommon at all for Dupieux. Fir example he made another recent film starring Oscar winner Jean Dujardin and Adèle Haenel and it is also shorter than 80 minutes. It is perfectly fine though for me. Better keep it essential like this than include 15 minutes of filler material that add nothing of quality to the story or any other aspects of the movie and only result in the audience getting the impression that the film has some lengths.
Now back to this movie we have here again. Even if the only cast member I am familiar with is Benoît Poelvoorde I see that pretty much everybody working on this one is really established actors who have starred in many many films. Oh wait, I do know Michel Hazanivicius too of course, just not as an actor. So this one as the title (the German more than the French) gives away already takes place at a police station and a lot in here is police interrogation. But this is no gritty crime drama. It is really all about the comedy from beginning to end. It already starts in the most bizarre mannee as we have a guy in underwear be in charge of a big orchestra and eventually he gets caught and taken to the station. No further explanations here. It's just the introduction and it takes os to the film's key location. From that moment on, it is one bizarre moment after the next. Be it the guy eating the whole oyster, the smoke getting out of the body, the guy and his triangle-shaped ruler or at the center of it all the really strange flashbacks. With these I am talking about the fact that really time in a chronological sense is not a factor here at all. When we are taken back to the night when the incident happened we have a female character ask questions in these flashbacks about something that happened minutes ago at the police station. This is the big joke. The smaller joke is also clocks going wildly crazy, both digital clocks and wall clocks. And at the end we see everything really is a big farce as the action moves on to a theater stage and everybody was in on it from the beginning, except the guy who is interrogated it seems. Nothing makes sense here and for once I am not saying this as a criticism. This was absolutely intended to add charm to the movie, even define the movie at its core. So this is not one to watch if you want the aforementioned crime drama with suspense, but just watch it if you are in for a goofy fun time. Even if admittedly it would not have surprised me at all eventually with how kind the suspect has been from the very start if he had turned out a cold-blooded killer in the end then, even if the lab report somewhat proves he is innocent. Maybe this was also the idea that Dupieux had when ending the film with the guy in cuffs again. Of course, not everything is working here from start to finish comedy-wise, otherwise I would have given this film a higher rating. For example the idea of how he keeps leaving the apartment that night and everything related to his wife did very little for me. But there it also becomes obvious Dupieux does not care about time when we see the guy with the one (no zero) eye(s) on television talking to the man. Or how they keep talking about how much of the flashbacks they can see and understand. Basically the film's take on comedy is summarized nicely in this helicopter crash story and afterwards this dog story both being told by the two people you see on the poster here and that nothing of it was really true. I laughed and at the film's best moments it definitely deserves 4 stars out of 5, but the ending, i.e. the last 15 minutes, I did not like too much so I will settle with 3. But I can see why this film scored some awards recognition, it is definitely really creative and almost unique in a certain way. If you like it or not, is up to you to decide. I can see this being a pretty divisive film like probably most other stuff by Dupieux. I give it a thumbs-up though and am glad I saw it.
Now back to this movie we have here again. Even if the only cast member I am familiar with is Benoît Poelvoorde I see that pretty much everybody working on this one is really established actors who have starred in many many films. Oh wait, I do know Michel Hazanivicius too of course, just not as an actor. So this one as the title (the German more than the French) gives away already takes place at a police station and a lot in here is police interrogation. But this is no gritty crime drama. It is really all about the comedy from beginning to end. It already starts in the most bizarre mannee as we have a guy in underwear be in charge of a big orchestra and eventually he gets caught and taken to the station. No further explanations here. It's just the introduction and it takes os to the film's key location. From that moment on, it is one bizarre moment after the next. Be it the guy eating the whole oyster, the smoke getting out of the body, the guy and his triangle-shaped ruler or at the center of it all the really strange flashbacks. With these I am talking about the fact that really time in a chronological sense is not a factor here at all. When we are taken back to the night when the incident happened we have a female character ask questions in these flashbacks about something that happened minutes ago at the police station. This is the big joke. The smaller joke is also clocks going wildly crazy, both digital clocks and wall clocks. And at the end we see everything really is a big farce as the action moves on to a theater stage and everybody was in on it from the beginning, except the guy who is interrogated it seems. Nothing makes sense here and for once I am not saying this as a criticism. This was absolutely intended to add charm to the movie, even define the movie at its core. So this is not one to watch if you want the aforementioned crime drama with suspense, but just watch it if you are in for a goofy fun time. Even if admittedly it would not have surprised me at all eventually with how kind the suspect has been from the very start if he had turned out a cold-blooded killer in the end then, even if the lab report somewhat proves he is innocent. Maybe this was also the idea that Dupieux had when ending the film with the guy in cuffs again. Of course, not everything is working here from start to finish comedy-wise, otherwise I would have given this film a higher rating. For example the idea of how he keeps leaving the apartment that night and everything related to his wife did very little for me. But there it also becomes obvious Dupieux does not care about time when we see the guy with the one (no zero) eye(s) on television talking to the man. Or how they keep talking about how much of the flashbacks they can see and understand. Basically the film's take on comedy is summarized nicely in this helicopter crash story and afterwards this dog story both being told by the two people you see on the poster here and that nothing of it was really true. I laughed and at the film's best moments it definitely deserves 4 stars out of 5, but the ending, i.e. the last 15 minutes, I did not like too much so I will settle with 3. But I can see why this film scored some awards recognition, it is definitely really creative and almost unique in a certain way. If you like it or not, is up to you to decide. I can see this being a pretty divisive film like probably most other stuff by Dupieux. I give it a thumbs-up though and am glad I saw it.