INCREDIBLE BUT TRUE **** France / Belgium 2022 Dir: Quentin Dupieux. 74 mins
Here’s the 11th feature film from electronic musician Mr. Ozio, a.k.a. writer-director-cinematographer-editor Quentin Dupieux, who makes high-concept sort-of sci-fi / horror comedies about murderous tyres (RUBBER, 2010), malevolent jackets (DEERSKIN, 2019) and giant flies (MANDIBLES, 2020). These, and his latest, are an acquired taste for sure – but never dull and, at his typically brief running time (under an hour and a quarter), seldom outstay their welcome.
This one is a characteristically strange hybrid of quirky time-travel story hook, absurdist sub-plots, observational humour and pathos. Alain Chabat is a nice, unexceptional insurance broker who buys a new house with his wife (Léa Drucker) from a peculiar estate agent – and soon discovers that a ladder in a duct in the basement takes them to another version of their house…12 hours ahead in time. The couple aren’t the only ones adjusting to life with “incredible but true” things: Chabat’s boss (Benoît Magimel) has an electronic I-Penis that can be controlled (“How do you steer a dick?”), has different settings and can produce an erection on demand. While Magimel fixates on his artificial cock, Drucker becomes increasingly obsessed on the added feature of the trip downstairs making her three days younger on each visit.
Chabat’s delightfully laidback performance grounds this off-the-wall concept in some semblance of reality – and the interaction with his hapless boss (the dick, inevitably, isn’t as perfect as it seems) and his ever more desperate wife (viewing the house as an immortality machine) cannily veers between hilarious and poignant. There are comic montages set to an odd, jaunty electronic score and moments of slapstick comedy – but, at its heart is a story of the one thing we all share: a terror of ageing and a constant desire to deny its inexorable progress. What starts as a light, knockabout comedy quietly transforms into a bittersweet study of insecurity and, in the process, breaks your heart more than a little.
Review by Steven West