Fantastic Fest 2010

Quentin Dupieux (aka Mr. Oizo) first entered the public conscious when his thumping techno track "Flat Beat" was released in 1999. The related music video and TV commercials featuring a yellow puppet named Flat Eric were also hugely successful. Dupieux went on to write and direct full-length films. His latest feature is Rubber, a wonderfully weird movie about — among other things — a tire that comes to life.

Rubber begins in a desert. A series of chairs are laid out in a zig-zag pattern on a barren road. A man with a pair of binoculars anxiously stands by the road. A car becomes visible in the distance. As the car moves closer, the driver purposely begins to knock over the chairs. The car halts and a policeman emerges. He delivers a monologue and quickly disappears. The camera pulls back to reveal that a group of people was watching the entire sequence of events. The people are waiting for a movie to begin. A movie about a car tire named Robert that inexplicably comes to life. Robert realizes that he has powers. Psychic powers. Psychic powers that make things explode. Things like bottles. Things like rabbits. Things like human heads.

As one might surmise from the description, Rubber presents two interconnected stories. One story is about the adventures of Robert the tire. The other is about a group of people watching a movie about the adventures of Robert the tire. If this sounds confusing, don't be alarmed. It is confusing. It is also ingenious. Rubber operates as both an homage to genre and a dissection of its logical innards. The film gleefully plays with a core cinematic conceit: suspension of disbelief. Screenwriters ask often ask the audience to accept the most unreal situations at face value. If stories about cyborgs, talking animals, walking corpses, and sentient bulldozers pass muster, why not a murderous tire with psychic powers?

Quentin Dupieux executes this prankish self-reflexive story with style and precision. The film obviously has a dark comedic edge but everything is played straight. Mostly. The performers, who include Wings Hauser and Roxanne Medina, absorb the parade of exploding heads, murders, sight gags, and improbable situations with stone-face austerity. The utterly deadpan approach is crucial to making the concept work. After awhile, the abnormal becomes normal. One character says that "I never thought I'd identify with a tire." The audience will feel the same way. By the end, everyone will cheer Robert. Even if he is popping skulls like birthday balloons.

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