Screened as part of NZIFF 2021

Mandibles 2020

Mandibules

Directed by Quentin Dupieux Incredibly Strange

Two amateur criminals discover a monstrous fly in the trunk of a stolen car. Their plan? Train the fly and make a fortune in this joyously absurd buddy-fly bromance.

Session dates and venues to be announced
France In French with English subtitles
77 minutes DCP

Rent

Director, Screenplay, Cinematography, Editor

Cast

Grégoire Ludig
,
David Marsais
,
Adèle Exarchopoulos
,
India Hair

Producers

Hugo Selignac
,
Vincent Mazel

Music

Metronomy

Festivals

Venice
,
Busan 2020; Rotterdam 2021

Elsewhere

French absurdist Quentin Dupieux has formed a formidable body of comedic work since his international breakout, the sentient killer-tyre movie Rubber. Mandibles, the follow-up to his wild, obsessed-jacket movie Deerskin (NZFF 2019) may just be his most accessible and amiable excursion into asininity yet.

Manu and Jean-Gab are two nice-but-dim amateur crims on a dodgy errand when they discover that inside the boot of their stolen car is a gigantic housefly. You read the right. A two-foot insectoid behemoth; Sacre-buzzy-bleu! These geniuses decide the best way to capitalise on this remarkable discovery is to train the fly to perform and make them a fortune. Like a Gallic “Stupide et Stupider”, Mandibles rejoices in such pure idiocy that it becomes something delightful as we watch our two anti-hero doofuses stumble through various encounters before running into Cécile, who mistakenly remembers Manu as a long ago one-nighter. She invites the two bozos to hang out with her brother Serge and friends Sandrine and Agnès at a stunning mansion.

As this absurd buddy-fly bromance movie escalates, Dupieux deceptively injects some tension into the oddball fuzziness by peppering the film with promises of unhinged psychodrama that never play out quite as expected. — AT

“Though Dupieux’s films have never shied away from violence and destruction, Mandibles preserves the filmmaker’s penchant for perplexity while asserting that life is a glorious thing – even in its distasteful weirdness.” — Natalia Keogan, Paste