If Luis Buñuel had directed an episode of ‘Fawlty Towers’…
15 cert, 77 min ★★★★★
Dir: Quentin Dupieux
Starring: Grégoire Ludig, David Marsais, Adèle Exarchopoulos, India Hair, Roméo Elvis, Coralie Russier, Bruno Lochet
There are no flies on Quentin Dupieux, the French surrealist behind Rubber and Deerskin. His new film, however, is a very different matter. Its star attraction is the biggest one you’ve ever seen – roughly the size of a small sheep, with eyes like half-basketballs, 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. When they’re en route – in a clapped-out, custard-yellow Mercedes – they hear a strange buzzing noise coming from the boot, pull over to investigate and find the creature. Manu’s first thought is to chase it away, since collecting the suitcase with a giant fly inside the car would look unprofessional. But Jean-gab has a better idea: abandon the small-time driving job immediately and train the fly to rob banks.
Instead, the two keep getting side-tracked, 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 school days. Three of her friends are also present – one of whom, Agnès (Adèle Exarchopoulos), has sustained a brain injury that means she can only talk at the top of her voice. Agnès is rightly dubious about the two shady new houseguests, who smuggle the enormous fly into their bedroom inside a blanket, and try to keep it hidden. If the “Basil the Rat” episode of Fawlty Towers had been written and directed by Luis Buñuel, the result might have been similar.
Dupieux is clearly aware there’s no real dramatic mileage in Mandibles’ absurd premise, but the film becomes funnier the longer it wanders around aimlessly, kicking at rocks. Ludig and Marsais, 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 be readily 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. No matter. Much like their characters’ IQS, the stakes are uncommonly low, and the ambience generally zoned-out and benign. Mandibles may technically be a creature feature, but there isn’t a trace of Cronenbergian bedlam. It’s a film that wouldn’t hurt a… well, you know.