Fawlty Towers meets French surrealism in this comic caper
Mandibles Cert TBC, 77 mins ★★★★★
By Robbie Collin
Dir: Quentin Dupieux Starring: Grégoire Ludig, David Marsais, Adèle Exarchopoulos, India Hair, Roméo Elvis, Coralie Russier
There are no flies on Quentin Dupieux, the enigmatic French surrealist behind Rubber and Deerskin. His new film, however, is a very different matter. In fact, its star attraction is the biggest one you’ve ever seen – roughly equal in size to a small sheep, with eyes like halfbasketballs, and thick bristles all over its back.
Yet in the film itself, the fly plays second fiddle to two humans: Manu (Grégoire Ludig) and Jean-gab (David Marsais), two gormless petty criminals in the south of France who are enlisted to drive a suitcase from A to B, no questions asked, for €500. But when they’re en route in their vehicle – a clapped out Mercedes in tinned-custard yellow – they hear a strange buzzing noise coming from the boot. Manu pulls over to investigate, wrenches open the boot and finds the creature. His first thought is to chase it away, since turning up to collect the suitcase with a giant fly inside the car would look unprofessional. But Jean-gab has a better idea. They should abandon the small-time driving job immediately and hole up in a hideout somewhere, where they can train the fly to rob banks.
This is not what happens in the film, though. Instead, the two keep getting sidetracked, and end up staying in a pretty coastal villa with a young woman (India Hair) who is convinced, completely incorrectly, that Manu is a former inamorato from her high school days. Three of her friends are also present – one of whom, Agnes (Blue Is the Warmest Colour’s Adèle Exarchopoulos), has sustained a brain injury in a skiing accident that means she can only talk at the top of her voice. Agnes is rightly dubious about the two shady new houseguests, who smuggle the enormous fly into their bedroom inside a travel blanket, and try to keep it hidden at all costs. If the “Basil the Rat” episode of Fawlty Towers had been written and directed by Luis Buñuel, the result might have been something like this.
Dupieux is clearly aware there’s no real dramatic mileage in Mandibles’ absurd premise, but it’s the opposite of a problem: Mandibles becomes funnier the longer it wanders around aimlessly, kicking at rocks. Ludig and Marsais, who are known in France as the comedy duo Palmashow, have a brainless rapport as Manu and Jean-gab that’s a joy to behold, starting with their all-purpose catchphrase-slash-hand-signal, “Toro”, which like the rest of the film’s jokes can’t readily be explained – not that the two don’t attempt to do so during a communal meal, at uproariously unrewarding length. The French accent might be famously sensual, but it’s also unbeatable for grunts of indifference, and Ludig and Marsais’s dialogue is peppered with these, along with occasional English interjections of “yes”, as if they’re reassuring themselves that what they’re doing isn’t staggeringly stupid, even though it usually is.
No matter. Much like their characters’ IQS, the stakes are uncommonly low, and the ambience generally zoned-out and benign. The colour palette is all faded beachside pastels, and the score by the UK electronic music group Metronomy chipper and flute-led. Mandibles may technically be a creature feature, but there isn’t a trace here of Cronenbergian bedlam. It’s a film that wouldn’t hurt a… well, you know.