Deerskin (film)

Georges, 44, buys a vintage fringed deerskin motorcycle jacket for €7,500 from an older man who lives in the countryside. The seller also gives him a digital camcorder, for which he has no use.

After buying the jacket, Georges checks into a small hotel in a nearby mountainside village. Having spent all his money on the jacket, he leaves his wedding ring as collateral with the receptionist. He meets a local bartender, a young woman named Denise, and says he is a filmmaker in town on a shoot. Denise is an amateur editor and takes interest.

Georges discovers that his estranged wife has frozen his bank account. He begins hearing his jacket speak to him, telling him it dreams of being the only jacket in the world. Georges convinces Denise to begin financing his film, which she will edit. He uses the money to pay a series of townspeople to appear on film giving up their jackets, which he then steals. A mute boy watches him in several instances, and Georges eventually throws a brick at him.

Georges slowly assembles a full deerskin outfit as he continues filming the scenes. When one subject refuses to hand over his jacket in the cold, Georges kills him. Shortly after, Georges breaks a blade off his hotel room ceiling fan, sharpens it into a weapon, and goes on a killing spree, all of which he films. He buries the resulting jackets in a hole outside town.

Denise, excited at the new footage, offers to produce the film and use part of her inheritance to finish it. She also reveals she's known Georges was a fraud since they met. After buying him a pair of deerskin gloves, she films him preening in his full outfit on a roadside hill. From the other side of the hill, the mute boy's father suddenly shoots Georges in the head with a hunting rifle. Denise continues filming as she takes the jacket off Georges's corpse and dons it.

In a mid-credits scene, Georges films himself with his jacket as he approaches a herd of deer.

In March 2018, it was announced Jean Dujardin had joined the cast of the film, with Quentin Dupieux directing from a screenplay he wrote.[2] Shooting started in the same month in Sarrance in the Pyrénées Atlantiques region of France. It was also shot in the Aspe Valley and surrounding regions.[3]

It had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on 15 May 2019 in the Directors Fortnight section.[4][5] It was released in France on 19 June 2019 by Diaphana Distribution.[6] It went onto screen at the Toronto International Film Festival on 12 September 2019.[7][8] Prior to, Greenwich Entertainment and Picturehouse Entertainment acquired U.S. and UK distribution rights to the film.[9][10] It also screened at AFI Fest on 16 November 2019.[11]

It was scheduled to be released in the United States on 20 March 2020.[12] However, it was pulled from the schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[13] It is scheduled to be released in the United Kingdom on 16 July 2021.[14]

Deerskin was released in France on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD on 5 November 2019.[15]

Deerskin holds an 89% approval rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 122 reviews, with an average of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Led by a daring performance from Jean Dujardin, Deerskin finds writer-director Quentin Dupieux working in a more accessible -- yet still distinctive -- vein."[16] On Metacritic, the film holds a rating of 65 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[17]

• Official website
• Deerskin at IMDb
• Deerskin at AllMovie