Midway through Quentin Dupieux’s breezy and jarring 2019 film Deerskin (Le Daim), Georges has a strange, solipsistic dialogue with a deer-leather jacket he’s just purchased with, quite literally, all of the money in his bank account. That figure, to be precise, is 7,500 Euros, two hundred less than the original owner’s asking price. As Georges, Jean Dujardin voices the leather jacket with a timbre slightly lower than his own, and Dupieux shoots the tête-à-jacket rather traditionally, over the shoulder, like a standard conversation. But the leather jacket doesn’t actually have its own consciousness - or does it? When, at the end of the movie, the jacket comes under the possession of Georges’ eager assistant Denise, the same transfixion comes under her as well. Who is really controlling who, or rather, what is controlling who?
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