Reality (2014)

 

Director: Quentin Dupieux

Screenplay: Quentin Dupieux

Cast: Alain Chabat as Jason Tantra, Jonathan Lambert as Bob Marshall, Élodie Bouchez as Alice Tantra, Kyla Kenedy as Reality, Eric Wareheim as Henri, John Glover as Zog, Jon Heder as Dennis, Matt Battaglia as Mike, Susan Diol as Gaby, Bambadjan Bamba as Tony, Patrick Bristow as Klaus, Sandra Nelson as Isabella, Carol Locatell as Lucienne

An Abstract Candidate

 

What are the sticky things in the tummy Daddy?

After films like Rubber (2010) and Wrong (2012), Quentin Dupieux made a more sedately strange film with Reality. This follows a series of figures wandering through scenarios set up by the film, dream logic integral to the premise that everything is interlinking between worlds, between the waking one to films and dreams. Time is non-existent, and logic is less concerning as the rationalisation all weaves into each other, a collective unconsciousness in dreams. When taken with her father to the woods, as he hunts boar, a young girl name Reality (Kyla Kenedy) sees as he guts the animal back home a blue videotape fell out of the corpse’s stomach, wanting to see what is on the tape. The host of a cooking show, where he wears an animal costume and asks guests if they believe in God as much as their chosen desert to make, is having an eczema attack which is not helping the production of the show and no one else can see. One of the cameramen, an older man named Jason (Alain Chabat), has a once in a lifetime deal to make a film with a producer, about televisions trying to conquer the Earth, and only needs to get the perfect groan of agony, good enough to win an Oscar, for the producer to bankroll the project.

Layers of reality are broken, without it leading to a conventional climax to rationalise it all, where an audience is watching the girl’s tale. They are dealing with producing her tale as a film, following an ex-documentary filmmaker named Zog (John Glover) who may be able to record dreams. There is a superintendent at her school, who goes to his psychiatrist, Jason’s wife, about a dream of driving a military car in a woman’s dress, only for Reality herself to be in the dream and later blackmail him over this. Reality herself will watch the cooking show and the videotape bends reality itself further as the film becomes more threaded between each other. There is no explanation of this, and it would be patronising to try to rationalise this either. What you get instead is dream logic of various states of mind and anxieties, a classical surrealistic style, but one you can see influenced by relevant ideas to the director-writer Dupieux. The inherent curiosity of an unmarked videotape, whether a boar can swallow one whole unscathed or not, is a surreal but would fascinate any of us if we encountered it, a little strange moment with curiosity in this phantom object as for the young girl. I can also see Dupieux himself as a filmmaker having had the anxiety Jason has, where he finds himself in a cinema where his premise for a film he worked so hard on is already a produced theatrical release. There are more overtly wacky moments – the producer is a figure who wants non-smokers who visit to try his cigar collection despite hating the smell, and picks off surfers from the nearby beach from his mansion with a sniper rifle – but this is not different from the gags surrealist artists used to pepper into their work on purpose with the subversion to catch viewers off guard, the predecessors to surreal comedy.

Reality is the logical conclusion to Rubber’s thesis of content in films happening for “no reason”, not with a nihilistic suggestion of meaninglessness, but with logic here beyond trivial structure of time, and characters like Jason and the host finding themselves lost in a world spiralling out of their grasp. Reality does not have as much of the wackier touches of the Dupieux beforehand, and feels a more sober production even if entirely a comedy at heart. The one moment which feels less indebted to figures like Luis Buñuel in tone is when we thankfully see Jason’s premise for his film Waves, which could have been a “Rubber 2” (as seen on a cinema marquee as a joke) with TV sets microwaving people until they start bleeding from every orifice to death. In fact scenes like this emphasises that Dupieux, part of this wave of “cult” filmmakers who came into cinema in the late 2000s onwards through film festivals and greater emphasis on the DVD releases being more readily available than theatrical screenings, had an advantage that surrealism found its footing in genre films and independent productions to bend such tropes. He was able to get to the point with Reality where it could touch on premises on psychotronic horror movies about homicidal electronic appliances, and yet also being deliberately more unconventional, basking in mood within it’s playful tone.

Dupieux’s style is clear, another US co-production whose style rejects elaborate camera set ups but allows him to use his locations and style for the intended goal, especially for this premise where realities will bleed into each other to the point bedrooms are to be found in woodlands. A prominent audible choice comes from using the same fragment of Philip Glass’ 1971 minimalist piece Music with Changing Parts, released as a full length album piece which Dupieux deliberately only used a fragment of to cause a sense of being in a loop¹. It is also befitting, knowing Glass’ precise style, or how his opera Einstein on the Beach (1979) consisted of repetitions of stream of consciousness for its lead, Dupieux choose a composer whose trademarks included layering multiple parts and repetition, something befitting for Reality’s examples of repetition and layering of sequences from earlier in the film onto others, before you even get to Jason finding there are multiple Jasons in existence.

There is some post irony here, where characters blatantly state that none of this is making sense, a sign less of compromise but a tongue in cheek humour. That in itself is arguably a mark of how culture has changed, how we have likely had to include this for modern films, but also with an awareness that this type of humour reflects a sense of malaise with life in general as reflected in sarcasm and ironic nods to this makes sense in context to this ennui. The idea of a collective unconsciousness this gets into is admittedly a positive concept, and the character of Zog comes off as an enlightened genius, dismissed for wasting film footage only for his skills and patience as a “fucking genius” to be revealed as he has figured out a way to record dreams and these through lines. The only character left who may still suffer is the host with his eczema, also finding out the eczema doctor he went to, covered entirely on the face with eczema, may be a gatekeeper aware of these realities too, and that this is never resolved may put some viewers off. The lack of conclusion or explanation in itself feels refreshing, ultimately a film deliberately designed as like a dream. All makes sense in the dream, and it is only after waking up, or leaving the film in this case, that one feels pause for thought trying to rationalise the material. For me, that was not a bad thing to experience at all.

Abstract Spectrum: Dreamlike/Eccentric

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): High

======

1) Quentin Dupieux Explains Why He Doesn’t Like Being Compared to David Lynch, written by Greg Cwik and published for Indiewire on May 4th 2015.

Wrong (2012)

Director: Quentin Dupieux

Screenplay: Quentin Dupieux

Cast: Jack Plotnick as Dolph Springer, Éric Judor as Victor, Alexis Dziena as Emma, Steve Little as Detective Ronnie, William Fichtner as Master Chang, Regan Burns as Mike

An Abstract Candidate

 

Sir, I took it upon myself to paint your van blue.

A fireman taking a dump in the middle of the road, reading a newspaper in front of colleagues, pretty much sets up the tone of Wrong perfectly from the first scene. Its director-writer Quentin Dupieux caught the attention of people in the wider world, as a French musician who became interested in cinema, as a filmmaker with Rubber (2010), his absurdist take on horror, with a fourth wall breaking aspect dealing with the fictional nature of cinema where anything can happen for “no reason”. Wrong premiered at 2012 Sundance Film Festival, and as a French-US co-production, it presents an absurd story befitting its “no reason” obsessed predecessor. Our lead Dolph (Jack Plotnick) wakes up one day and cannot find his dog Paul, starting a series of non-sequiturs as he tries to locate his beloved pet. Even if it has its moments of absurd abruptness from the get-go - the neighbor, on his way out of town forever, gets angry and denies he jogs in the morning, and thinks Dolph’s sleeping robe is filthy and disgusting - there is a progression to Wrong which, in its own logic, befits the tone later Luis Buñuel lent into for his last act of his career. The difference is that, Buñuel subverted religion and bourgeois culture in the likes of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). Here, we have to consider the leanings to more deliberately ironic comedy, expressed as one of the characters set up in the story, pizza staff member Emma (Alexis Dziena), is introduced over the phone to Jesus’ Organic Pizza when Dolph, trying to cope with the initial loss of Paul, ends up in a lengthy discussion about a logo of a rabbit on a motorcycle not making sense.

His story is the well worn one of a lonely man who struggles in life. Yes, it is absurd that at his work place it is raining indoors, but the more absurd detail is that he has been fired from the place for three months prior, and still goes to work for some semblance of connection to life. It is a bleak absurd humour to all this, as the world is conspiring against him in a variety of ways. Paul’s disappearance is revealed to be by a company lead by Master Chang (William Fichtner), revealed to be an organization that deliberately kidnaps pets, than returns them after time to create a sharper bond between randomly chosen owners, only for a mishap to cause Paul to become lost even if the driver of the van involved was killed instantly. As tragic for Dolph is the abrupt discovery, as his hired gardener Victor (Éric Judor), that his beloved palm tree has turned into a pine tree for reasons neither can explain. And for what could be seemingly a nihilistic story, as nothing makes sense for Dolph in his plight, what you also get is a work that manages perfectly to get the littlest deadpan joke to work without elaborate effects or a cartoonish pratfall. Even when things are stated they become funny.

The Luis Buñuel comparison is much more befitting, rather than a figure like David Lynch who Dupieux is not a fan of being compared to¹. One joke even feels like something a beloved filmmaker of mine, the Chilean legend Raul Ruiz, would be proud of, where a character abruptly dies of a stroke, only to appear again without anyone asking about his passing and seemingly miraculous resurrection. Buñuel is the right choice in himself anyway, as between the pair you see staged dramatic scenes, as this follows Dolph’s journey to locate Paul, being undercut by the surreal invading the scenes. This is not particularly the same as David Lynch at all as many of his most bizarre and unsettling scenes are always set up with something very amiss. Shot in California, with a starkness from being set entirely in the day, conversations in Wrong follow logic only for an absurd touch to come in, plot threads layering into each other. Emma the pizza store employee falls for Dolph over the phone, only to think Victor is him, and vice-versa when they met in the flesh, and the attempts to track down Paul include both the potential to learn telepathic communication with dogs through Master Chang’s writings, and a dog detective so precise to track his missing pets, he has figured out a way to take dog feces and access its memories of when it was inside a canine.  

Honestly the closest thing to a Lynchian moment is when Dolph is offered an adopted dog whilst Paul is being located, only to be offered a small child as if nothing is amiss. Most of this, however, is more ridiculous deliberately, but I would not necessarily say either it is ironic for the sake of wackiness either. Neither would I say it is nihilistic for the sake of it despite having used that term earlier. As a viewer born on the autistic spectrum, there has always been a sense, in adapting to society in general, a greater acute awareness of the aspects seemed to be normal actually making no sense and becoming nonsensical in my day to day. This is something which is felt in how Quentin Dupieux with this film definitely is playing to the idea nothing makes sense for Dolph whatsoever. There is a happy ending to this story, which actually proves the more rewarding choice to have gone with, as this presents us the right mix between the anxious and the intentionally silly, finding a right balance in even having the missing object of love being a dog in the first place, something that he chose rather than a love story between a man and a woman which would have been disturbing with this scenario instead².

With his wife Joan Le Boru as the production designer, the first with her as a prominent artistic director on her husband's films afterwards, Wrong as a distinct aesthetic, an American movie but with a sense of disconnect. Everything is sunny and picturesque, but contrasted by the back alleys and dog kennel locations which felt out of time. Even in the opening with the neighbor, who for reasons he cannot explains has to leave his home and drive off the end of the world, the scene between him and Dolph is noticeable, over just the road between their houses, in how they are shot with a sense they are so far away the neighbor cannot hear Dolph, and with them shot together the close ups feeling claustrophobic. White is a predominant colour but that is not a pleasant one, more disconcerting as Dolph himself is wandering along without a real grasp of control. Even that aforementioned happy ending is entirely out of his hands, a destiny as dreamt by another in precognition, as throughout too seemingly everyone else can be possessed by an unknown force to remind him to visit Master Chang at a specific time mid-conversation. The subplot with Emma even becomes overtly surrealistic, in the true classical art movement sense of this idea, in how it involves backwards footage being used, a child born on a beach who cannot tell the difference between a broken wine bottle neck and a sea urchin, and aptly for the Luis Buñuel comparison, someone waking up being buried alive in a casket without any context. What this means really is less a concern; surrealism was meant to shock one out of complacency, and as I have mentioned earlier, if there has to be a meaning to all this, just to experience a day in a life of an everyman who struggles to comprehend the world around him is justifiable as a meaning for an entire feature length story.

Wrong was a pleasure to witness, in mind that the earlier films like Wrong only really starting to be released in the USA when the interest in Quentin Dupieux started to exist. Thankfully over time that has started to change, but Wrong is still obscurer as a result of this. In mind that Rubber could have been a one-off, and no one would take interest in him if he suddenly showed none of the originality he had, thankfully Dupieux would become an auteur for the 2010s off the back of titles like this.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Surrealist

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

 

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1) Quentin Dupieux Explains Why He Doesn’t Like Being Compared to David Lynch, written by Greg Cwik for IndieWire, and published on May 4th 2015.

2) Writer-Director Quentin Dupieux Talks WRONG, Balancing Comedy and Anxiety, Links Between Random Elements, WRONG COPS, and More, written by Christina Radish for Collider, and published March 29th 2013.

Keep An Eye Out (2018)

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/
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Director: Quentin Dupieux

Screenplay: Quentin Dupieux

Cast: Benoît Poelvoorde as Commissaire Buron; Grégoire Ludig as Fugain; Marc Fraize as Philippe; Anaïs Demoustier as Fiona; Orelsan as Sylvain; Philippe Duquesne as Champonin; Jacky Lambert as Franchet / Carine Lustain; Jeanne Rosa as Narta; Vincent Grass as Daniel

Synopsis: In a police station being questioned for a suspicious death by Commissaire Buron (Benoît Poelvoorde), main suspect Fugain (Grégoire Ludig) is in an even worst predicament when another gristly incident happens and figures start to invade his ongoing testimony to Buron.

[Some Major Spoilers, so be wary]

It's been a long while since I've seen a Quentin Dupieux film, since his debut (and influence on the blog) Rubber (2010), and it's been too long. Unfortunately whilst his work was still being released in the USA, it stopped in the UK leaving many films like Wrong (2012) and Reality (2014) out of reach. It's a shame as, since a film about a sentient rubber tire with psychic powers, Dupieux here plays a subtler game indebted to the final period of Luis Buñuel's career with the films he shot in France.

Initially it suggests a farce as a half naked man conducts an orchestra in the park, quite well in fact as he could've taken the job if he merely wore trousers, before the police chase him off. Afterwards it becomes a tale of Fugain, who finds himself being questioned by Commissaire Buron for an inexplicable body being found outside his apartment complex. Recounting his side through an ongoing testimony, Fugain has a further issue at hand that there's now a dead cop (by accident via a triangle protractor and an open filing cabinet drawer) being hidden in the room, deciding not to try to admit to an accident but hiding him in a cupboard.  

Keep An Eye Out is a small tale, one which is entirely about this incident whilst Dupieux punctures it with moments of strangeness. Buron has a hole in his chest, for example, from being shot which is brought up when he smokes, or when an oyster (plus shell) is eaten. All is played for deadpan humour thankfully, the absurdity found in it breaking the normalcy set up; it's particularly a good choice in lieu of the film being shot and designed as having a husky, deep coloured aesthetic with minimal camera movements, feeling like it is set in the seventies at points but clearly in its own world. Even when the cast is broad - a one eyed officer very enthusiastic about his police badge, Buron being the lacksidasical cop who takes a call for a casual meeting in the midst of an interrogation - there is still the sense of its own form of naturalism in contrast to Rubber which deliberately, in a meta text, played with the notion of "just because" with cinema's absurdities.

The thing that stands out here in contrast to that film, rather than openly riffing on its own artificiality, is that, even if it does raise questions about the logic of the film itself, Dupieux decided to have a film where the reality is constantly being manipulated without it being a deliberate meta text. Instead, Fugain's testimony of the night he found the body becomes the prime aspect of the narrative - starting with telling all the amount of times he went out his door one night, all watched over by a nosey female neighbour, alongside details such as the improvised cockroach spray he uses malfunction, all of which Buron immediately finds boring and openly says to him.

Then figures invade the testimony (including the dead officer Fugain is trying to hide) demanding questions and setting him off tangents in time, including a stint not part of the testimony talking to the officer's wife about how he'll meet him in the future outside the testimony, and even Buron himself becomes a bystander within it who can see everything visually. This is why I made the Buñuel reference. The film does have an overt moment of farce with this structure - the pair sharing false memories they can actually see, Buron stuck on an desert island starving, Fugain having a childhood memory of letting the dog free and sticking the dog collar (plus chain) on and sitting in the dog house outside - but the flashbacks in general become closer to Buñuel's work. Films in his final French era of cinema, famously The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), played with dreams and reality being constantly subjective to each other in layered plot structures; even before Fugain is forced on tangents talking to intruders, the entire fact that Buron is prodding these testimony scenes as not being particularly exciting have their own gleeful sense of the perverse to them in unfolding the reality itself.

From here, it's literally a chamber piece, apt as whilst it does have moments which might have some logic gaps, it does play into where the film leads to when its pulls the carpet from under the viewer's feet and the world is a literal stage. It's an obvious twist if you were open minded, but the joke is that Fugain is still stuck in a scenario which now becomes Kafkaesque when it ends. And ultimately Keep An Eye Out feels like, as a compliment, a small project for Dupieux, a sketch in filmic form going from his ambitious mad debut, the sketches' in a filmmaker's career capable of still being worthy and here in particular showing his flexibility. In fact, the earnestness of the cast and the film's style even enforces a greater weirdness, their good solid performances adding emphasis to the moments of true bizarreness whilst the production and technical craft, subdued, creates a level of its own rules of reality to work from. Just so that, when that aforementioned oyster is eaten whole, it feels of the world even down to a look of sheepishness when a trickle of blood is on the eater's lip, admitting whilst it was a nice oyster it cut their mouth as if a minor inconvenience.

Abstract Rating: Absurd/Playful/Weird

Abstract Spectrum (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

Personal Opinion:

It was nice to see Quentin Dupieux again; excessively long since the first encounter and arguably he's matured in that time to an advantage whilst still being incredibly silly, which is also a good thing. The result is a nice, efficiently made gem which makes one wish Dupieux was actually better known so I can see his films.

From https://vanyaland.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/keepaneyeout.jpg

Halloween 31 For 31: Rubber (2010)

From http://www.impawards.com/intl/
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Director: Quentin Dupieux

Screenplay: Quentin Dupieux

Cast: Stephen Spinella (as Lieutenant Chad); Jack Plotnick (as Accountant); Wings Hauser (as Man In Wheelchair); Roxane Mesquida (as Sheila); Robert (as The Tire)

Synopsis: As explained to the viewer by policeman Lieutenant Chad (Spinella), the following film exists for "no reason". As a crowd of viewers stand on a hill, watching on at the events unfolding with binoculars, a rubber car tire (Robert) comes to life in a wasteland area. Not only does the tire become a living and moving entity, but it also has psychokinetic powers that allows him to cause anything it concentrates on to explode. The tire starts its destructive tendencies running over a plastic bottle, than a scorpion, than blowing up small animals before, after developing an obsession with a young woman Sheila (Mesquida), turning its attentions to human beings.

It's a gamble to start any film with a monologue to the camera talking about films existing for "no reason". It's a way to let this film's premise exist without complaint, but not only can it be seen as the director-writer having his head up his own arse, but it could be a betrayal of the premise as well, as one doesn't need to justify a premise like this and should make the film regardless without the monologue. But let's take the idea of "no reason" seriously for a moment. It could be seen as a very nihilistic monologue but I can't help but think, even if it wasn't Quentin Dupieux's intention, of "no reason" meaning that no concrete rationale exists for why films are made, only entirely subjective reasons existing. Because anything can be depicted in cinema, the choices made are entirely based on the individuals involved and their will to create it. The reason why no one uses the bathroom in Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) was done for a reason, but it was a subjective one, "no reason" baring what was desired for the film's crew. It could be seen as tasteless to reference JFK (1991) and The Pianist (2002) in this monologue, the real life events having reasons in terms of a successful assassination attempt and the Holocaust to explain them, but films based on real events, especially those sort of films as information can be changed to be more cinematic, have "no reason" to having been made barring a decision to depict the event in a movie. A decision could've been made as much to make a film about JFK surviving and changing American politics, which would have "no reason" in being made barring the mere desire to.

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If the monologue is in danger of being pretentious, there is a vague reach to Dada ideals that there is no clear definition of cinema's meaning barring its mere creation. Dada hated the presumed beleifs of what art was through the act of anti-art, while here the film prods at why anyone takes things like ET being brown at face value. Even the non-film examples like why people like sausages and some don't explains this, "no reason" unless in rare circumstances like vegetarianism for any decision or type of behaviour to exist barring being a subjective choice by a person only. "No reason" is a mantra for removing pretence from any cinematic choice and letting it exist as an unpredictable entity to be viewed without trying to rationalise it. It means as well the notion of the subjective is important. One of the key facets to the abstract cinema I hunt out for this blog is that they question grounded ideals of what exists in storytelling and how cinema is actually made, what the images and sound (or lack of them) do to effect a viewer. The "No reason" argument could be typed out and placed underneath the blog's title because it perfectly encapsulates how cinema can (and should) distort one's perceptions of reality. The thing that doesn't make any sense, and encapsulates the point of the monologue, is that Lieutenant Chad is giving the speech, having gotten out from the boot of a police car beforehand, while holding a glass of water and doesn't drink any of it, spilling it on the ground on purpose. A waste of a nice cold drink in a hot desert, also a subtle moment of absurdity which "No reason" is demonstrated through.

Breathing life into a tire, Rubber manages to bring a personality to an inanimate object as well and make it one of the most intriguing villains to appear in cinema, brought to life with practical effects and framing that manages to bring a reality to the creation. It starts the film falling repeatedly like a child learning to walk to his more unconventional behaviour being fleshed out, especially his obsession with television, a strange joke in his fascinating with human beings but causing many to implode on a whim. There's an innate surrealism to a tire being seen on an arm chair while watching NASCAR on television, his cousins on the wheels of the cars onscreen, and the narrative plays with such moments continually, the interactions with the tire and the actors far from embarrassing for the performers before Robert is actually a talented actor through utterly clever production skills. No matter how absurd the image is, the tire is depicted with such skill in how it was made to move and interact with its environment that when a scene comes of it rolling down a highway being followed by a police car, there is a weight of conflict there despite one of the participants being a Goodyear tire.

Fromhttp://www.liveforfilms.com/wp-content/
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The audience within the film viewing the events is less interesting as a meta comment or Greek chorus as the film goes on but become as much part of the onion layers of this film's world instead. The concept itself is more stranger than you'd normally presume, such a trope not that rare now, because of how it effects temporality and perception greatly, us the viewer watching an audience watching the events through including them. The meta references, such as someone being caught pirating the events on a digital camera or wheelchair bound Wings Hauser criticising the policemen for taking too long to blow up the tire, are very obvious and instead feels more rewarding if viewed in the same light as a Monty Python sketch. Here the fourth wall breaking becomes less a comment of the various forms of reality but a more subversive form of it through making everything prey for a joke at their expense, even the distance between us and the actors on the screen made as ridiculous. That the audience is part of a peculiar conspiracy that's part of the narrative is far more interesting, a conspiracy that ends up bringing a further layer of distorting to the world's reality because Hauser refuses to eat or sleep, more interested in watching the live action film (sic) playing out.

What helps is that Dupieux has a clear sense of humour, the right sensibility of having sincere thoughts alongside the sillier content, making them fit together seamlessly. A short interview with him he directed himself about Rubber's origins is proof of this - what he talks about is entirely real comments, but he happens to be speaking like the backward talking midget in Twin Peaks and the voice of the interviewer is being layered over a male blow-up sex doll in a director's chair. He avoids making such humour in the film itself too broad, instead intercut with scenes of quietness or the ordinary being subjected to the scenario. There's is a sereneness to an image of a tire dropping itself into a swimming pool, languishing in the bottom as one would find in a shot of an actor doing the same, as much of interest for Dupieux to envision the idea through a form of fleshed out existence as well as revelling in the countless head explosions that take place too.

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Technical Detail:

Short on digital, a huge virtue for the cult electronic musician turned director is that he's got an eye for beautiful cinematography and, as his own cinematographer too, he made the clever decision of setting his strange premise in the realistic setting of Americana. Vast tracks of desert surround the gas stations and rundown diners, and for all the absurdity of Spinella's performance as the police lieutenant who knows he's an actor for the audience within the film, everyone else is playing their roles seriously as ordinary folk who've ended up in an absurd scenario, one where a car tire can cause peoples' heads to explode like in Scanners (1981). I've actively despised how the term "surreal" has been taken over to represent something that's a surface, novelty weirdness, or a film like Final Flesh (2009) which forgets a vital part of surrealism of grounded reality and the irrational co-existing in the same scenario. While it doesn't take itself seriously, Rubber is still a sincerely made b-movie with artistic sensibilities, executing the premise of a killer car tire to the best of its abilities.  The digital camera, when used right, is as useful a tool as celluloid especially as, with beautiful flashes of sun rays hitting the screen, the grounded reality makes the events of the film more potent in their strangeness than if a wacky aesthetic had won out. As the director was successful before his filmmaking career as musician Mr. Oizo, his co score with Gaspard Augé is suitably atmospheric, dance music which still fits the tone of the scenario.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/XWWufhqyGE8/maxresdefault.jpg

Abstract Spectrum: Psychotronic/Surreal

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

The film is a b-movie premise but made with sincerity and purpose, rather than with irony and little to build upon. The meta-content could be seen as the sole weakness as it feels like an unnecessary defence to the film, but Rubber despite this is a prime example of how you can make an unconventional genre film which stands out as a one-off. As the audience within the film are whittled down to just Wings Hauser, the film escalates to a stranger tone, multiple layers of reality at play that boggles conventions. Unlike another film, Rubber can get away with an abrupt and random joke occasionally at this point because it keeps a consistent tone which develops this escalation further. Sometimes it's better to not need an intellectual reason behind events in a film, instead the complete unpredictability of the content and even how the structure changes the real abstract aspect of the movie itself. A joke about a stuffed toy abruptly appearing becomes a jolt, one never mentioned again, that stands out in a scene that's already great because the director-writer manages to create reality that accepts these "no reason" moments. That it only takes a tire to begin is fitting. One artist in the past had found just implementing two baguettes as shoes perfectly encapsulated a surreal idea, and that the film almost suggests a parody of the Planet of the Apes films throughout its very short running time adds to this notion in an incredibly funny way that also evokes a serious ecological message out-of-the-blue too.

From http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/2811/18464126.jpg

Personal Opinion:

Rubber was such a pleasant revisit, a cult film which can legitimately get on the Abstract List because the tone and content is suitably out there in context. The strength of this has enforced as well a reason why I love this type of cinema, Rubber starting off with a basic premise and semblance of a plot but using them as links to connect the more important aspects, the results and their effect on the viewer. This could've been an awful film, legitimately pretentious, if it was bogged down by an overcomplicated narrative or too much dialogue, instead depicting the absurd premise through the visual content and choice use of lines from the actor that add to the surrealism instead. Even here you can learn that you get a better film if narrative is pushed aside in favour of the bare bones of a narrative being used to lead to the effects created by it.

Compare this to a film like Tokyo Gore Police (2008) - Reviewed Here - which had a lot of plotting which went nowhere and undermined what good it had through poor cinematic content, until finally drowning itself in a lack of clarity and lack of an actual finale act. A film like Rubber in comparison is not only an excellent example of surrealism in genre cinema, but is a good modern day cult film. I also found the film utterly hilarious and inventive, culminating in a delightfully great climax where Los Angeles with the Hollywood sign in the skyline is the final shot. You'd want to see a sequel but it was probably for the better that Quentin Dupieux left it to this ending only and made other films instead.