Deerskin is a horror comedy about a man in love with his new jacket

Frankly, my deer jacket is the best thing to happen to me.

Jean Dujardin in French film Deerskin

What are we to make of Georges, the protagonist of the French movie, Deerskin?

He’s a middle-aged man who has been overtaken by an exceedingly peculiar obsession. Some men of Georges’s age might ruin their lives, and the lives of their wives, by a compulsion for gambling, or for younger women, but not Georges. His obsession is hardly traditional. He’s developed a weird aversion to jackets. He thinks nobody should wear a jacket, unless it’s a jacket made from 100 per cent deerskin.

Georges is played by Jean Dujardin, who is best known outside France for his role in the ‘‘silent’’ movie, The Artist (2011), and he’s a versatile actor who found fame playing OSS177, a James Bond-like secret agent, in a couple of very successful comedy films. His performance in Deerskin is light years away from anything he’s done before. Georges is totally self-absorbed, egotistical, delusional and, it transpires, dangerous.

We first meet him as he drives towards the French Alps, stopping at a filling station to remove his jacket and dump it in the toilet. We discover nothing much more about him, except that he’s left his wife, who has blocked him from accessing their joint bank account. His destination is a small village where he has a rendezvous with an elderly man (Albert Delpy) who sells him a deerskin jacket for the impressive sum of €7550; for that price he’s also given a camcorder, which proves invaluable to him in the days ahead.

Georges falls instantly in love with his new jacket, even though it doesn’t fit him properly. He gives it a ‘‘voice’’ and talks to it. By this time it’s clear that he’s quite deranged, but we don’t yet know just how deranged he is. He checks into a small hotel, even though he has no cash and his credit cards don’t work. He poses as a film director and impresses the hotel barmaid, Denise (Adele Haenel), a sweet, gullible young woman, with aspirations to be a film editor.

Georges claims to be working on a film but he says he’s short of cash because his producers, who are supposedly filming avalanches in Siberia as part of the project, are temporarily uncontactable. Denise is pleasantly surprised that this stranger seems happy to hire her as editor of his film despite her lack of experience, though the only money available for the production comes from her savings account.

Meanwhile Georges’s obsession grows — he acquires boots, a hat and (a gift from Denise) trousers, all made of genuine deerskin. And he becomes increasingly hostile, and violent, towards men who wear jackets.

Deerskin, which was selected to open the Directors Fortnight in Cannes last year, was written, directed, photographed and edited by Quentin Dupieux, and it lays claim to be one of the weirdest films I’ve ever seen –—weird and yet strangely compelling. I suppose you could describe it as a sort of horror comedy, but it’s not like any horror film, or for that matter any comedy film, you’ve ever seen before. Strange as it is, Dupieux and Dujardin handle the material in a very straightforward way. The location photography is attractive, the performances excellent, and the unclassifiable content continually keeps the viewer off kilter. Is this a satire on an untalented would-be filmmaker and the naivete of those with whom he comes into contact? I wouldn’t know, but I found it strangely enthralling.

Deerskin (Le daim) (MA 15+)

Four stars

Limited release