Full Phil

What would it look like if a family dramedy tackled the pressure points of parenthood through body horror, absurdist comedy and the tropes of a 1950s monster movie? Like a new film from Quentin Dupieux (Rubber, R&A 2010; Deerskin, R&A 2019).

The French director, also known as electronic musician Mr. Oizo, has a taste for surreal, small-scale films that take one mind-bending idea and see how far it can be pushed.

Full Phil follows American industrial magnate Philip Doom (Woody Harrelson) and his adult daughter Madeleine (Kristen Stewart) on a trip to Paris, meant to rebuild the lost connection between them. Nothing goes to plan. The father’s anguish gradually settles in his stomach, while the daughter mostly just wants to watch a horror film and stuff her face.

In Dupieux’s world, the banal and the absurd walk hand in hand: a hotel room turns into a feverish nightmare, a meal becomes a bodily ordeal, and an everyday conversation spirals into an existential crisis. Harrelson and Stewart make for a perfectly ill-matched lead pairing in a film the director himself has described as “Emily in Paris in Hell.”

Rauli Karjalainen (translated by Kati Ilomäki