Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a little more from my time at the Fantasia Film Festival up in Montreal.
Rubber is at this moment the highlight of the fest for me.
I knew going in it was about a tire that gains life and has the ability to make people’s heads explode and that was enough to get my ass into the seat, a feat I barely managed as they limited the amount of people that could see the flick.
In fact, I was turned away the first night it screened and missed out on a Q&A with the star of the movie (the tire, named Robert).
“No reason” is the tag line of the movie and the underlying theme of the picture. Here’s how the movie opens:
In the desert, a car slowly drives up a dirt road toward us. In the road are a good dozen wooden chairs. The car swerves and hits them all on its way up to us before stopping. Out of the trunk comes a uniformed Sheriff. He takes off his aviators, hands them to the driver and gets a glass of water in return.
The Sheriff walks up to the camera and starts talking to us, the audience. Why is the alien brown in Steven Spielberg’s ET? No reason. He rattles off a few more movie examples before saying that in every single film in history there’s an undercurrent of “No Reason.” Why do we accept it? Because that’s life. Why don’t we see the air around us? No reason.
Then he looks at us silently as he pours the glass of water out and walks back to the trunk.
This seems to be writer/director Quentin Dupieux’s mantra and his ability to cut any origins to the tire gaining a consciousness. It also gives him an excuse to truck in random weirdness after random weirdness.
For instance we’re not the only audience watching this movie. There’s a veritable Greek Chorus of observers, an audience brought in to watch the story unfold through binoculars. They comment on what they see, like loud talkers during a movie screening.
The story story starts with a slow pan across the desert floor that stops on a half-buried tire. It slowly turns, shaking the dirt off as it gains sentience.
In a funny way this part almost plays like a Pixar movie. We see the tire learn to walk… erm… roll… you know what I mean. It falls down, picks itself up… falls down again… picks itself up, wobbles, falls and then gets the hang of it. There’s real character to this inanimate object, this round piece of rubber, and that character shows through the entire movie.
It seems the tire gets an appetite for killing and goes on a bloody rampage as he/it chases down a pretty French Brunette that catches its… um, eye? Nothing’s safe. If you piss this thing off or even get in its way it’ll start to vibrate, rubber shaking as it somehow focuses some kind of telekinetic energy to blow up your damn head, Scanners style.
As this is unfolding there’s another plot thread involving the spectators that I won’t spoil, but the whole thing adds up to a wonderfully bizarre piece of work. I hesitate to bring in this comparison, but fuck it… This whole aspect of the movie felt very Terry Southern-ish to me. It’s something I’d expect to find in THE LOVED ONE, just a crazy running commentary on the events unfolding and on cinema itself… done in a weird, but funny and honest way.
Sure, there’s probably a good 10 minutes of the tire rolling down an empty road throughout the feature that isn’t needed, but because Dupieux succeeds at giving this tire a personality I didn’t mind it too much.
Bloody, sexy, funny, weird, entertaining, off-kilter, original, violent; all these words describe Rubber, but the one I want to point out more than any other is entertaining. These high concept flicks tend to make better short films than features, but I found myself totally engrossed with this film from beginning to end, never exactly sure what was coming next.
Highly recommend this one. Check out the teaser trailer below:
RUBBER TEASER 1 ! from oizo mr on Vimeo.
Yep, it’s awesome.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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RUBBER TEASER 1 ! from oizo mr on Vimeo.
