Mandibula (2020)

Directed by: Quentin Dupieux | 78 minutes | comedy, fantasy | Actors: Grégoire Ludig, David Marsais, Adèle Exarchopoulos, India Hair, Roméo Elvis, Coralie Russier, Bruno Lochet, Raphaël Quenard, Gaspard Augé, Thomas Blanchard, Philippe Dusseau, Olivier Blanc, Jean-Paul Solal, Jézabel Marques, Marie Narbonne, Pablo Beugnet, Marius Colucci, Dave Chapman

Ten years after the premiere of ‘Rubber’ (2010), the film that made director Quentin Dupieux internationally known, the Frenchman is back with the surrealistic ‘Mandibules’. Dupieux’s ninth feature is a highly idiosyncratic buddy comedy. In many ways the film resembles the French kinsman of ‘Dumb and Dumber’ (1994), but with a high dose of fantasy.

At the beginning of ‘Mandibules’, the unsuccessful childhood friends Manu (Grégoire Ludig) and Jean-Gan (David Marsais) come together for a job that will earn them five hundred euros. It shouldn’t be a problem for them: they just need to pick up a package and hand it over to the recipient. However, while en route to complete their mission, they discover a giant fly in the trunk of their car. From that moment on, the friends begin to question their priorities. They see the extraordinary opportunity to train the fly and thus earn money. How exactly? The duo doesn’t know that yet. Maybe they’ll use the fly as a participant in a bank robbery. Or maybe as a drone. But first food will have to be bought for their animal companion, for the fly is hungry. Very hungry.

‘Mandibules’ is a curious film that could easily have missed the mark. The film could well have turned out to be a clichéd monster film, one where the fly gets a taste for flesh and blood and starts killing. But this doesn’t happen in Quentin Dupieux’s designed world. The director does not seem to be interested in action or suspense, but rather in the everyday banalities of life. This always contrasts with the presence of the fly, which leads to a separate relationship between the normal and the imaginative.

Quentin Dupieux is the kind of filmmaker who doesn’t care what the public thinks of his work. In fact; he seems to be out to mess with them. Strangely enough, it’s refreshing to be played like that. Dupieux lets you know early on that he knows how stupid this movie looks on paper, but he then embraces this craziness with a degree of mastery that impresses. It’s hard not to chuckle at the complete absurdity he’s propagating here. Sometimes it comes down to just a few things: a shot of the fly, the facial expression of one of the characters, or a subtle joke in the background. All this is achieved without any film music whatsoever, which makes it a fairly pure film experience.

‘Mandibules’ is an eccentric film that conveys nothing but madness. It’s a weird and unique movie that shouldn’t be nearly as memorable, but it is. The film will not be a crowd puller due to its strangeness, but Quentin Dupieux doesn’t seem to be aiming for that either. His dream was simply to make a comedy about a giant fly, which he accomplished on a modest budget. How many other filmmakers can you say that about?