A pair of fools go on a complicated road trip that only seems to span a few miles. They are to pick up a suitcase, the contents of which they are not supposed to discover, and deliver it elsewhere—for 500 euro. Easy money. Along the way, they discover that the beat-up Mercedes sedan they’ve stolen to complete their task contains, in its trunk, a dog-sized fly.
The fly makes a few bizarre warbled sounds but is otherwise gentle, more afraid of them than they are afraid of it. Instead of getting rid of the giant fly or stealing a different car, one of them decides they can make much more money training it to rob banks for them. Their ensuing adventure is filled with increasingly dense decisionmaking and stupid luck.
This is the premise of Rubber director Quentin Dupieux’s latest film Mandibles, available on demand July 23. It’s his first out-and-out broad comedy, but its fairly simple plot contains his usual rigorous sense of the absurd. The adventures of the severely obtuse Manu (Grégoire Ludig) and the stunningly illogical Jean-Gab (David Marsais) are as silly as they are somehow compelling, with their relentlessly terrible decision-making taking the norms of French (and American) comedy blockbusters to new levels. Like auteur Bruno Dumont, Dupieux has emerged from his more artistic style to play around in comedic waters. The result is, refreshingly, not high brow humor, but an admirable attempt to see how far one can push the well-worn formula of buddy comedies—and where that process might take one ideologically.
French comedies are famously steeped in language and gesture, though not always overt physicality. Miscommunications, funny voices, and bad manners are often leaned upon, drilling down on the idea that the biggest laughs are begotten from those who don’t fit in or don’t understand. Dupieux uses that foundation to look at class dynamics: Manu and Jean-Gab are homeless and working class, respectively, with Manu sleeping on the beach after being kicked out of his lodging, and Jean-Gab living with his mother and working at a gas station. They are cash-poor with negative assets. 500 euro is a lot of money to both of them. Yet despite the easy opportunity they’ve been handed, they cannot seem to follow simple directions to collect their due. They want more—potentially thousands—and they are fairly confident in their unlearned methods.
Confident idiots are also at the core of many broad American comedies, which at their best are self-aware about how the world perceives people from the U.S.: greedy and blustering. Dupieux seems to comment on both kinds of confidence–the French and American sort—and square his characters up against their contradictions. Manu and Jean-Gab are utterly unmannered and at times aggressive, but totally earnest and often vulnerable. They have grand ambitions that seem unlikely to pan out, yet they emerge from each fumble unscathed. The more upright and moneyed people around them are so baffled by the pair's presence that they’re easily deceived.
The two friends’ bizarrely won luck takes them to the summer home of a rich girl, Cécile (India Hair), who mistakes Manu for a childhood friend. Among these wealthy folk, only the unfortunate Agnès, played in a hilarious turn by Blue Is the Warmest Color breakout Adèle Exarchopoulos, can seem to get on their level. She speaks exclusively in a yelling register—brain damage from a skiing accident being the explanation—and chastises the men for their stupidity. She’s suspicious of their clumsiness precisely because her disability sets her starkly apart from her glamorous friends. They see her as a bit of a charity case, patronizingly overpraising her cooking, speaking about her as if she’s not there, and otherwise ignoring her, unable or unwilling to meaningfully accommodate her new way of being. With her startling pitch, she can be the bad guy, pushing past politeness to confront these strange new interlopers.
Of course, one of the ironies at the center of Mandibles is that the most discerning person in the film is dismissed because she cannot communicate respectably. What makes Manu and Jean-Gab so funny is that they tend to say the most ridiculous things in such a soft and unassuming manner that despite their lack of book smarts or common sense, Cécile perceives them as sweet. For men, this can be a winning combination, especially when their kindly (yet not harmless) ignorance seems familiar. Cécile only accepts Manu because she thinks she knows him, and ignores all signs of deception, eventually betraying Agnès because her confidence in false knowledge is so strong.
Manu and Jean-Gab stand in opposition to Cécile and Agnès’s tortured dynamic. Their friendship is intractable. No matter how astray they lead themselves and each other, they always come back to where they belong. It’s all incredibly silly, yet undeniably honest.
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