‘Mandibles’: Quentin Dupieux’s Giant Insect Malarkey Is Pretty Goddamn Fly [Venice Review]

It’s a proper shame we’re not allowed physical contact at the moment, because Quentin Dupieux‘s “Mandibles,” among its many other silly pleasures, offers up a modified fist-bump-style handshake that could easily have swept the Venice Film Festival campus as the greeting du jour any other year. It involves both participants forming their hand into bull’s horns and then briefly interlocking their outstretched fists while saying “Toro” (because of the bull thing) preceded or followed by a description of what you’re “Toro”-ing about. So it’s “Breakfast Toro!”, “Toro emotion!”, “Toro getting-away-from-the-girl-who-thought-I-was-someone-else!” or, in a pinch when there’s no one else around, “Self-Toro!” You just have to hope this benighted pandemic is over before you run into Dupieux himself, because the temptation to “Fun movie Toro!” or “Toro good job!” him, after “Mandibles,” would likely be too strong to resist.

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This 77-minute snack of a film follows two bumbling besties, Manu and Jean-Gab, played by French TV comedy double-act Gregoire Ludig and David Marsais, as a kind of overgrown Gallic Bill & Ted. Their excellent adventure begins not with a term paper and a time machine, but with a shady assignment for Manu – a surfer-gone-to-seed-type who’s been kicked out of his apartment and has taken to sleeping on the beach, rolling toward the water in his sleeping bag during the night so he looks from afar like the washed-up corpse of Laura Palmer – which requires him to steal a car. 

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He hotwires an already frequently hotwired Mercedes, decrepit and dusty and in Flat Eric yellow (for those who don’t remember that far back, Flat Eric was the laconic, iconic puppet-outlaw that Dupieux, in his persona as Mr Oizu, designed for a 1999 series of Levi’s commercials). But then, having picked up his friend Jean-Gab, a young man by no means suave enough to carry off his fuzzy corkscrew-curl mullet (history’s most unflattering hairstyle), they notice a strange buzzing noise coming from the trunk. It contains rags and boxes and a fly the size of a border collie, which freaks Manu out because he needs the trunk space.

The pleasure of watching really stupid people interact on screen (and Manu and Jean Gab are both definitely at least un sandwich short of un pique-nique) from Laurel and Hardy to Harry and Lloyd, is that every situation is pregnant with possibilities the rational mind would never consider. So while Manu frets about this crimp in his original mission, Jean-Gab sees in the fly an opportunity for a more lucrative caper. At first Manu is unconvinced but when Jean-Gab explains his foolproof plan – to befriend the fly and train it so that it will buzz into banks and stores, picking up money and goods and returning them to the pair “like a drone” – he enthusiastically agrees. The fact that it’s the most patently ludicrous part of Jean-Gab’s scheme that gets Manu on board tells you all you need to know about their dim-bulb buddy dynamic: It won’t be the last time a quite sensible-sounding proposal is scornfully rejected until its more intricately ridiculous aspects are explained, whereupon the other is persuaded. “Agreement Toro!”

Dupieux, who always acts as his own cinematographer and editor and so has developed a very recognizable stonewashed-deadpan aesthetic, does not make long films. Even so, his particular brand of wry surreality is shown to best advantage when not stretched beyond the 90-minute mark – “Deerskin,” his terrific Cannes Directors Fortnight breakout from last year, also clocked in at a svelte 77 minutes. And “Mandibles” finds him on his most accessible form ever, so much so that he even keeps an Adèle Exarchopolous-shaped ace up his sleeve for the second half of the film. At just the point that the shenanigans with feeding and training Dominique (the name Jean-Gab chooses for the fly to whom he is becoming increasingly attached) might be getting a little repetitive, a whole new arena of dumb fun opens up.

After a case of mistaken identity, rich kid Cecile (India Hair) brings Manu and Jean-Gab to stay at her vacation house with her and her friends, including the initially mute Agnes (Exarchopolous). Agnes’ bonkers condition is too funny to spoil here, but suffice to say the scene in which it’s revealed is a hoot, instantaneously proving that Exarchopolous can add the gift of sublime comedic timing and delivery to her already formidable arsenal of acting talents. Later, an absolutely priceless reaction of hers is dwelled upon in an increasingly hilarious shot-reverse-shot sequence that returns to her face at least three times and could probably have done so twenty more, only becoming funnier each time. 

The really new news of “Mandibles” however, is, where in the past Dupieux’s surrealism always had a cynical, sinister, even murderous undercurrent, here, he lets himself be cheerful, as though infected by the sweet-natured bromance between his appealing, appalling idiot leads. It’s not that there’s aren’t casualties in this bauble – there’s a headbutting, accidental kitchen fire and events take a dark turn for both Agnes and a small dog – but the sunnier outlook feels like a liberation for the director of “Rubber,” “Wrong,” “Reality” etc., giving the lighter-than-air film the upward drift of a helium balloon finally released, or maybe an E.T.-sized fly, with the tape finally removed from its wings and a huge open sky to explore. Sentimental Toro! [B+]

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