Video & On Demand - P'tit Quinquin DVD and VOD
Originally conceived for the French-German television network Arte as a four-part serial and featuring local actors form Northern France, P’tit Quinquin is an absurdist, slapstick, metaphysical and at times disturbing murder mystery. The film opens with the discovery of human remains stuffed inside a dead cow in a World War II German bunker by the beach. Capitaine Van der Weyden investigates this crime as well as subsequent, no less bizarre ones, but he has to contend with a band of young scoundrels led by P’tit Quinquin, a boy who always goes around with his beloved Eve.
Unsurprisingly, Li'l Quinquin has been compared to Twin Peaks and True Detective. ‘P'tit Quinquin's tone may well be comic, but in the course of its running time Dumont touches on numerous issues that complicate his rural, Picard-speaking corner of France: immigration, racism, marital discord, illicit sex, and, of course, violence. Scratch beneath the surface and see what you find!’ (Piers Handling, Toronto Film Festival).
Directors' Fortnight, Cannes Film Festival 2014
Toronto International Film Festival 2014
London Film Festival 2014
New York Film Festival 2014
Best Series, French Association of Critics 2015
To date, he has directed seven feature films and now a TV series, all of which border somewhere between realistic drama and the avant-garde. His feature films are La vie de Jésus (1997), L'Humanité (1999), Twentynine Palms (2003), Flandres (2006), Hadewijch (2009), Hors Satan (2011), and Camille Claudel 1915 (2013). L'Humanite and Flandres were both awarded the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, while Hadewijch won the FIPRESCI prize. P'tit Quinquin (14) is his latest work.
A sequel Coin Coin et les Exchtraterrestres has just been announced, which will be made once he has finished another series Ma Loute, which has just gone into production.
La vie de Jésus / The Life of Jesus (1997)
L'humanité / Humanity (1999)
Twentynine Palms (2003)
Flandres / Flanders (2006)
Camille Claudel 1915 (2013)
P'tit Quinquin (2014)
Written and directed by | Bruno Dumont |
Cinematography | Guillaume Deffontaines |
Sound | Philippe Lecoeur |
Editors | Bruno Dumont, Basile Belkhiri |
Mixer | Emmanuel Croset |
Costumes | Alexandra Charles |
Props | Martin Dupont-Domenjoud |
Make-up | Alice Robert |
Production Director | Cédric Ettouati |
Casting | Claude Debonnet, Clément Morelle |
Producers | Jean Bréhat |
Rachid Bouchareb | |
Muriel Merlin | |
Coproduced by 3B PRODUCTIONS & ARTE France | |
With PICTANOVO | |
With the support of Région Nord-Pas de Calais & LE FRESNOY, Studio national des arts contemporains | |
In partnership with CNC | |
In association with Cofinova 10 | |
With the participation of CNC & TV5 Monde | |
200 minutes |
|
CAST | |
Alane Delhaye | P’tit Quinquin |
Lucy Caron | Eve |
Bernard Pruvost | Captain Van der Weyden |
Philippe Jore | Lieutenant Rudy Carpentier |
Corentin Carpentier | Kevin |
Julien Bodard | Jordan |
Baptiste Anquez | Mohamed Bhiri |
Lisa Hartmann | Aurelie Terrier |
Frederic Castagno | Forensic examiner |
Stephane Boutillier | Monsieur Lebleu |
Philippe Peuvion | Quinquin's Father |
Celine Sauvage | Quinquin's Mother |
Jason Cirot | Dany |
Cindy Louguet | The Majorette Mme Campain |
'You can keep your Scandi noir. What about northern French forensic-thriller farce? This is the latest film from that quite extraordinary French director, Bruno Dumont. He has decided to vacate his creative heartland of fierce social realism in favour of acid black comedy.'
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
★★★★
'There is, paradoxically and un-analysably, a weird beauty here: a stoical, uplifting defiance in the face of life, death and the worst that both or either can bring.'
Nigel Andrews, The Financial Times
'Why P'tit Quinquin is the film you should watch this week'
Guardian Video review
★★★★
'Dumont reveals a surprising taste for down-to-earth humour and gentle sympathy for his characters"
Kate Muir, The Times
★★★★
'P’tit Quinquin, his four-part mini-series made for French television, is an odd hybrid by any generic measure, showing all at once the bestial within the human, the devil in the haystack and something nasty in the woodshed. With its keystone kops, oddball locals and gruesome grotesquery, P’tit Quinquin is funny alright – but also deeply unnerving.'
Anton Bitel, Little White Lies
★★★★
'Don't miss the best ensemble cast you'll see this year.'
Tara Brady, The Irish Times
Ryan Gilbey, The New Statesman
★★★★
'P'tit Quinquin plays brilliantly with the conventions of small screen crime dramas and big screen thrillers: the sensational deaths, the suspicious locals, the tangled romantic relationships'
Emma Simmonds, The List
★★★★'Dumont plays along with murder-mystery expectations – throwing in red herrings and shifting suspicions – but also manages to balance ‘Twin Peaks’-style madcap running gags with a serious meditation on human evil.'
Trevor Johnston, Time Out
★★★★
'a wonderfully strange and wickedly humorous tale'
Ben Nicholson, Cinevue
★★★★
'Mesmerising'
Jamie Graham, Total Film
‘A wonderfully weird and unexpectedly hilarious murder mystery...…ravishing widescreen cinematography…’Scott Foundas, Variety
‘a quasi-remake, in farcical mode, of the director’s 1999 murder drama Humanity….a cross between Twin Peaks and Northern French comedy hit Welcome To The Sticks.’
Jonathan Romney, Screen International
‘…mesmerizing 197-minute murder mystery…the human comedy in all its grotesque and happy-sad variations…“Li’l Quinquin” is a quasi-epic farce that mostly wears a poker face as it elaborates his continuing obsession with the collision of humankind’s bestial and spiritual impulses…exquisitely photographed...’
Stephen Holden, The New York Times
‘…the haunting, transcendental style is very much a continuation of everything has made the director one of the most lauded on the world cinema circuit for nearly two decades… it's Twin Peaks meets The Little Rascals meets Little House on the Prairie. And it also works on a strange level as a remake of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.’
David Jenkins, Little White Lies
‘...both a Zolaesque revelation of brutality in the French countryside and a sly laugh riot. The director, Bruno Dumont, returns to his native northern France for a grand yet nuanced fresco of rural life that’s as intimate and loving as it is derisive and horrific.’
Richard Brody, The New Yorker
‘Something rare and rewarding: a Dumont film that paints its small-town milieu with as much humor as violence (though there's a fair dose of that, too) and finds some tenderness in life's absurdities.’
Abby Garnett, Village Voice
'The best movie that Bruno Dumont has made since L’Humanite (1999)'
Adam Nayman, Cinemascope
'Dumont packs in the literary and cinematic references in exchange for the usual suspense of the television mystery.'
Sarah Winshall, Under the Radar
'The film twists itself every time you get think you get a handle on it, mixing violence and humanism, frivolous jokes with profound considerations of behavior.'
Tim Brayton, Antagony & Ecstasy
Der Weyden (Bernard Pruvost) is 'this season's most offbeat detective, beating out even Joaquin Phoenix's coke-snorting Doc Sportello in "Inherent Vice".'
Scout Tafoya, rogerebert.com
'It's hard not to understand Li'l Quinquin as a potential apotheosis for European art cinema.'
Clayton Dillard, Slant Magazine
Photo 2
Photo 3
Photo 4
Pressbook
Quad poster as jpeg
Interview with Bruno Dumont in Bomb Magazine
Interview with Bruno Dumont in Stage Buddy
Interview with Bruno Dumont in Film Comment
Interview with Bruno Dumont in Les Inrockuptibles (in French)
Critical Conversation on Mubi Notebook Neil Young & Michael Pattison
Watch an interview from Mubi Notebook
Watch an interview with Bruno Dumont during the Cannes Film Festival (in French)
Watch the Q & A following the film's screening in Cannes