Capital Celluloid 2014 - Day 288: Thu Oct 16

Li'l Quinquin/P'tit Quinin (Dumont, 2014): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 11.45am



58th LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (8-19 October 2014) DAY 9
Every day (from October 8 to October 19) I will be selecting the London Film Festival choices you have a chance to get tickets for and the movies you are unlikely to see in London very soon unless you go to see them at the Festival. Here is the LFF's main website for the general information you need. Don't worry if some of the recommended films are sold out by the time you read this as there are always some tickets on offer which go on sale 30 minutes before each screening. Here is all the information you need about the best way to get tickets.

This film also screens on Saturday 11th at Cine Lumiere. Full details here.

LFF introduction:
Who would have predicted a comedy from Bruno Dumont, the auteur behind such austere dramas as Hadewijch and Camille Claudel 1915? Yet P’tit Quinquin is not only comic, but altogether knockabout. Set in Dumont’s familiar Northern France, it concerns a series of bizarre crimes involving corpses and cattle, and the local children who become fascinated with them, headed by intrepid Quinquin. Leading the investigation, and taking the phrase ‘bumbling cop’ to new extremes, is Captain van der Weyden – clueless as Clouseau and unkempt as Columbo, with an extraordinary range of facial tics. P’tit Quinquin is riotous stuff, but confrontational too – partly because of Dumont’s casting of apparently physically or mentally disabled non-professionals, partly because of its unsettling depiction of everyday racism. Made as a TV mini-series but shown here as a self-contained film, P’tit Quinquin is a hoot – yet unmistakably 100% Dumont. 
Jonathan Romney

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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