But in a lot of films, the impulse to jolt, revolt and bludgeon with raw sensation outweighs the craft and, indeed, the thinking behind the thing. Even when genre films are self-aware, they’re often made or conceived in half-measures -- witness the dreary “Snakes on a Plane.”
But “Rubber” is another matter. Writer-director Quentin Dupieux, best known as a musician in his native France under the name Mr. Oizo, has come up with a film that both critiques genre cinema and embodies it -- cleverly, engagingly, surprisingly, and, chief of all, humorously.
We begin in the desert with a sheriff (Stephen Spinella) explaining that movies -- indeed, all plots -- are random, senseless, arbitrary (among his examples are the protagonist of “The Pianist” dressing like a bum “for no reason,” so take it as you will). He’s addressing his comments to a group of people who are gathered amid the rocks and dunes to watch a performance of some sort. And that performance is the core of this fresh and engrossing slasher film.
“Rubber” is the story of a sentient, autonomous, homicidal automobile tire which (almost typed ‘who’ there...) wanders through the desert destroying inanimate objects, small animals and, ultimately, humans by means of some sort of telekinetic powers that make its victims’ heads explode.
(Giving you a minute to absorb that....)
The unnamed tire is no more motivated in its killing spree than, oh, Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers -- and, if you think about it, no less human. Dupieux is, as a Frenchman would, deconstructing the slasher genre here while engaging in it: none of them, he’s telling us, is truly about plausible human behavior, so why use human (or semi-human) characters in them?
To further the playfulness, the story of the homicidal maniac being chased by the cops is embedded in the story of the stranded-in-the-desert audience being promised one sort of experience and tendered something quite different. (Again, the “Snakes on a Plane” example is illustrative, though in that case the audience full of suckers were nonfictional and had paid to see the thing.) At some level, the fact that actors are watching actors is laid plainly bare -- and yet there remains a layer of tension amid the Brechtian surrealism and meta-art.
True, “Rubber” doesn’t ennoble you or comfort you or afford you insight into the human condition. But it does make you laugh, it does grant you the spectacles of gore that you expect from a slasher film, and it does lay bare some of the often unquestioned tropes, tricks and conventions of the genre which it both lances and, clearly, loves.
As a film that parodies its own species, “Rubber” is quite a bit like “Scream” or “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.” But it’s got an avant-garde sensibility at its heart that gives it a little more arthouse feel than those films. And it’s a truly memorable calling card for its creator, a man who obviously feels no sense of limits or fealty to tradition. That sort of iconoclasm is too often an artist’s own self-satisfied reward. But “Rubber” is engaging, brisk and smart enough that the audience wins, too. It’s grand, mindless fun that makes a thoughtful point.
(82 min., R, Hollywood Theatre) Grade: B-plus