Plot
Dolph Springer wakes up one morning to realize he has lost the love of his life, his dog, Paul. During his quest to get Paul (and his life) back, Dolph radically changes the lives of others -- risking his sanity all the while.
Release Year: 2012
Rating: 6.4/10 (1,529 voted)
Director:Quentin Dupieux
Storyline
Dolph Springer wakes up one morning to realize he has lost the love of his life, his dog, Paul. During his quest to get Paul (and his life) back, Dolph radically changes the lives of others: a pizza-delivering nymphomaniac, a jogging-addict neighbor in search of completeness, an opportunistic French-Mexican gardener, and an off-kilter pet detective. In his journey to find Paul, Dolph may lose something even more vital: his mind.
Saying that Wrong, the new film by French director and lover of all
things non-sequitur Quentin Dupieux, is strange does the film somewhat
of an injustice. Not because the movie surpasses the limits of strange
(although, to be fair, it does), but because strange implies something
nonsensical, content that defies explanation or logic. Wrong is a film
that, despite being so bizarre, manages to come around full circle and
make sense at the end. All its surreal imagery has purpose at the end,
and the film is at its strongest at the last moments where one can step
back and appreciate it as a whole.
Wrong begins with Dolph Springer, a man who inhabits a slightly off-
kilter universe in which trees "make sense" based on their own unique
place and offices shower their seemingly unaware employees with
torrential rain. He is a simple man: he goes to work every day and
enjoys the company of his gardener Victor, a man who seems to be
forcing an unneeded French accent. Dolph wakes up one morning to find
his dog has gone missing, and embarks on a journey to rescue his pooch
from whatever peril it seems to have run across. To summarize the movie
any more would be a disservice, as the best part of the film is the
pleasant little surprises that come along the way.
What I can tell you is that the film is absolutely absurd. From William
Fichtner's restrained but subtly outrageous performance as this world's
version of a zen master to a strange sequence that refuses to define
itself as reality or dream, there is enough outlandish content to fill
any surrealists imagination. Although these elements are certainly
bizarre, it still feels like they deliver a message. They contribute to
a feeling that there is something deeper being said, and by the end one
walks out with a feeling that Dupieux subtly and ever so brilliantly
schooled the audience.
That being said, the movie has problems. For large chunks of the film,
especially during a tour of a small animals digestive tract (don't
ask), it feels like the director is treading water. In fact, I would go
as far as to say that a good quarter of the movie loses its surreal
edge, and becomes more than a little monotonous. These scenes clog the
movie, and get more than a little frustrating as it holds back an
otherwise breezy and enjoyably silly movie.
It's a shame I can't go deeper into the movie, to explain the emotions
that built inside me by the end or the flaws that made the movie shy of
greatness. It's a movie that works better the less you know about it,
plain and simple.
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