DVD Review: ‘Reality’ isn’t what it seems

The title “Reality” may be intended ironically, since Quentin Dupieux’s film is anything but. It could be better entitled “Surreality”: it owes more to Luis Buñuel — arguably the daddy of film surrealism — than anyone else.

In one of the layers of reality in 2014’s “Reality,” the title refers to an 11-year-old girl named Reality. Her name is likewise not very accurate, since every once in a while, the camera pulls back to reveal that she’s actually a character in a film being shot by a temperamental director named Zog (John Glover).

When a cameraman (Alain Chabat) on a local TV cooking show pitches Zog’s producer (Jonathan Lambert) a film idea — about alien televisions causing humans’ heads to explode — he agrees to greenlight the project only if the cameraman can record the greatest groan in cinema history.

Unfortunately, the cameraman wanders into a theater and is enraged to see that his unmade movie is being shown. And it might also be on a VHS tape that Reality (the girl) has found in the guts of a slaughtered hog.

Shout! Factory’s Blu-ray accurately reproduces the film, though the visual style was never one of its greatest virtues. There are no extras (unless you count the trailer, which I don’t). The main advantage of watching “Reality” this way is that its fractured nature is a lot easier to decode when you have the option of rewind and fast forward.

Reality (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, $26.99)

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ANDY KLEIN is the film critic for Marquee. He can also be heard on “FilmWeek” on KPCC-FM (89.3).