Weird, original and enticing, but very misguided. 2/4

Rubber is about a sentient tire named Robert that rolls around the highways of the American Southwest, becomes infatuated with a young woman, and blows peoples’ heads off via telekinesis.  Naturally, when word of this film hit the Internet early last year, people were understandably perplexed and excited; it was the right side of bizarre.

So it would surprise people that the saga of Robert the Telekinetic Tire serves as its own B-story.  Rubber revolves around an exercise in the absurd; a kind of deconstruction between audience and filmmaking.  Sometimes it’s funny, but more often than not it’s unnecessary and gets in the way of what could have been a very fun film.

As a result, Rubber is part quirky horror comedy, and part absurdist art film.  If one were to edit together the homicidal psychic tire parts, it would make for a great short film, the one people paid the price of admission to see in the first place.  Unfortunately, writer/director Quentin Dupieux seems more concerned with making an undergraduate philosophical-artistic statement than tell a story that he forsakes the best bits for its worst.

The film opens with the town sheriff (Stephen Spinella) addressing an audience- both a group of binocular-armed bystanders and us- about the reason behind any aspect of a film:  Why is E.T’s skin brown?  Why do the two main characters in Love Story fall in love?  The answer: no reason, which is the driving force behind everything in Rubber.

As far as the scenes involving Robert, “no reason” works.  The lack of origin or explication works in Rubber’s favor; we don’t need a reason for why a tire suddenly comes to life, nor do we need to know what his motives are in the first place.  After all, pitting a laughable villain that defies all notions of reason and reality against the atypical constraints and conventions of your average horror film would make for proper deconstruction, and would satisfy the curiosity of those intrigued by the films trailer.

Unfortunately, the “no reason” philosophy behind Rubber is its own downfall.  Rather than build a story out of his own idea of a homicidal tire, Dupieux renders Rubber a pseudo-postmodern deconstructionist statement that has little to do with its rubber protagonist.  I suppose Dupieux did this for “no reason,” but “no reason” is not the same as “no point,” and if the latter is the backbone of a movie, then there is no reason for it to even exist.                                  

Most of Rubber involves some kind of meta-commentary on filmmaking and film watching.  There are people watching Robert from a distance, providing stray observations and snarky commentary, and the sheriff goes about his job as though he were on set, acting and reacting as though none of what is going on is real, and that it is all a show.  Near the beginning of the film, it is appropriately odd and it works, but as the ruse continues, it takes up most of the film’s space, and it quickly wears out its welcome.

I haven’t the faintest idea what Dupieux is trying to say or do with Rubber.  He is not all too concerned with telling a story- at least, not the story of Robert, the reason people attended the film in the first place.  Instead, Dupieux seems to be experimenting, but in doing so, he has totally missed the point of filmmaking, storytelling, and deconstructionism.  The problem with most self-proclaimed post-modernists is that they misunderstand that deconstructionism is about: deconstructing something in attempt to discover a new way to understand whatever it is you’re looking at.  Dupieux, however, is just deconstructing for the sake of leaving something in pieces and calling it art.  Despite what some modern artists may think think, leaving something in shambles isn’t art, it’s just a pile.

Manohla Dargis of the New York Times wrote, “By embracing irrationality as his operating principle (or at least by pretending to), Mr. Dupieux lets himself off the narrative hook.”  I disagree.  Relying on superficial post-modernism does not- nor should it- get you out of providing a narrative; it’s just lazy writing.  What’s unfortunate about Rubber is that it had a lot of potential to be a legitimately clever, post-modern genre film, and when Rubber focuses on its initial premise, it is well worth watching.

Note: When he is not making films, Quentin Dupieux is a French DJ who goes by the name “Mr. Oizo.”  I’m not sure what most would make of this, but it seems relevant nonetheless.

Just as married couple Ben (Mark Duplass) and Anne (Alycia Delmore) call it a night, Ben’s old college friend Andrew (Josh Leonard) shows up unannounced.  Although the two revel in their shared past, its clear that both men are in two entirely different places and have little in common; Ben has settled into a suburban life complete with house, white picket fence, and the intention of raising a family, while Andrew has been living life on the road a la Kerouac as a wandering bohemian artist.

While out at a party, Ben and Andrew begin to drunkenly discuss Hump Fest, a local event in which amateurs submit artsy pornographic videos, and come up with the idea of videotaping themselves having sex with each other, as the idea of two heterosexual men engaged in homosexual activity is particularly edgy.  The next day, both men continue discussing the idea and become obsessed with it for different reasons; Andrew wants to finally see an artistic idea through to completion, and Ben wants to rebel against his own vanilla temperament that accompanies suburban living.

I’ll take the opportunity now to state that there is no way I can continue this review without unwittingly writing down dirty puns and double entendres in an attempt to describe this film.  Anything, from describing the film as “touching”, to saying that “both characters formed a deeper connection between one another” will be taken wildly out of context.  Although I usually condone such wonderfully juvenile sensibilities, for the purposes of this review, keep yourselves in check.

The prospect of two heterosexual men having sex with one another may be difficult to swallow, but Shelton seems to make it work by making fun of machismo and the stubborn refusal to back down from a dare or a bet.  Of course, the

Honestly, guys ordering Appletinis are more suspect than these two.

prospect of two men refusing to pussy out from having sex with each other sounds ridiculous, but then again, so is the whole phenomenon of one-upping amongst men.  Besides, men tend to be inappropriate and crass when they get together, so having a dare escalate to such an extreme is actually quite plausible.

Some may find this film difficult to watch due to its mildly sluggish pace rather than the subject matter, believe it or not.  As part of the “Mumblecore” movement in indie cinema, the film appears to be shot on a handheld camera, and much of the dialogue is choppy and full of “umms”; sometimes it makes a scene appear more realistic, and other times its just tedious.  Although the scenes between Andrew and Ben are the most entertaining, the rest of the scenes with other characters seem to meander as they only function as setup or context to later conversations between the two leads, yet doesn’t stand up on its own merit.

Naturally, the plot is kept afloat by “will they, won’t they” tension, but what keeps the film afloat and worth watching are the revelations and insights concerning identity.  There are a few scenes in which Ben and Andrew, whilst struggling with the prospect of physical intimacy, are emotionally intimate with one another and reveal feelings of regret, loss, and the need for companionship or purpose in a way that is honest, bold and, dare I say it, heart warming.  These scenes make the entire dare into a clever little macguffin that allows two men to explore who and what they are.

The entire film is more or less a build up for the final twenty-minute scene, which takes place in a hotel room where the dirty deed is to be done.  I won’t spoil whether or not anything happens sexually, but the scene is wonderfully done, and manages to be both funny and touching at the same time.  Both Duplass and Leonard have fantastic chemistry and give sincere performances, thus making their concerns about that next step into maturity and personal re-evaluation as sincere as sincere gets.

Regardless of what your perceptions of the film are, Humpday proves to be quite a surprise.  Despite its sometimes sluggish pace and a concept difficult to take seriously, the film manages to dig deep and produce something very human with a considerable amount of heart, and turns a movie about weird sexual escapades into a story about true intimacy.