‘The Piano Accident’ Review: Quentin Dupieux’s Cruel, Funny Portrait of a Broken Media World

Beyond being a specialist in absurd and surreal comedy, French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux has, in his most recent work, begun paying closer attention to something that looks a bit more like reality. And no, it’s not that his films have become any less bizarre. Rather, what we call “reality” now resembles his films more than ever. The ridiculous has become the norm, and everyday news often slips into the territory of pitch-black humor. Movies like The Second Act, Daaaaaalí!, Incredible But True and, above all, Yannick zero in on the contradictions and miseries of contemporary life—miseries involving the press, the arts, politics, technology, and beyond. In The Piano Accident, arguably the darkest comedy of this run, Dupieux turns his attention to another distinctly modern phenomenon: influencers.

An almost unrecognizable Adèle Exarchopoulos—sporting braces, short hair, and a laugh that’s both grating and faintly sinister—plays Magalie Moreau, a mildly pedantic woman we first see relocating to a remote cabin in the French mountains. She is accompanied by Patrick Baladras (Jérôme Commandeur), who appears to function as her assistant. In the first of the film’s three brief chapters, Magalie grapples with the irritation caused by the move itself, her discomfort over an orthopedic neck brace and a cast she has to wear, and the awkward intrusion of an obnoxious fan who shows up uninvited.

But a far bigger problem soon emerges. A journalist named Simone Herzog (Sandrine Kiberlain) sends them a threatening email: if Magalie refuses to give her an interview, Simone will expose to the world the secret “piano accident” the pair have experienced—and kept hidden. Irritated and unwilling—Magalie does not give interviews—she is nevertheless forced to comply. The second chapter revolves around this tense exchange, and especially Magalie’s answers, delivered through flashbacks that gradually reveal parts of her past. What can be said in advance is that Magalie is an influencer who became famous—and very rich—through social media stunts inspired by Jackass-style daredevil antics, repeatedly putting her body at risk. That same routine is what has led her to her current predicament, which the film slowly unpacks.

The Piano Accident is a brutal satire of the media ecosystem, beginning with the freakish nature of Magalie herself, an introverted, socially awkward woman who found fans and fame through the most minimal of concepts: clips that last only a few seconds and feature her taking on the most absurd risks imaginable. The film then turns its knives on the equally abrasive journalist, who—under the guise of a more “serious” purpose—seeks to profit in a thoroughly unethical way. No one around them is spared either: the assistant, his wife, and even Magalie’s relatives come off badly. Least of all the aggressive fan and his younger brother, who simply refuse to accept “no” as an answer.

What Dupieux gradually constructs—true to his minimalist style, with few locations and a small cast—is a universe in which the only way people relate to one another is through sheer cruelty, unchecked narcissism, and, above all, an absolute conceptual void. The tone of absurdist black comedy allows the French filmmaker to get away with this approach, although in its final stretch The Piano Accident slightly oversteps the boundaries of its own eccentric logic. The urge to shock the audience and to deliver a blunt lesson about the times we live in ultimately outweighs the more ambiguous internal logic the film had maintained up to that point.

The remarkably versatile Exarchopoulos shines in a role far removed from her usual screen persona, though the actress from Blue Is the Warmest Color has already proven—more than once, including in earlier collaborations with Dupieux—that she has a sharp instinct for absurd comedy and a willingness to mock her own image. Dupieux’s view of the world is brutal, absurd, and merciless, but in a strange way this may also be the most realistic film of his career. Given the era we live in and the kind of hyper-individualistic culture that is now celebrated, it hardly seems far-fetched to imagine that something very much like what unfolds in The Piano Accident is happening to some influencer, somewhere in the world, right now.