Nightstream: MANDIBLES Review – Every Hustler Needs An Angle… Or A Giant Fly
Drew Tinnin
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Directed by Quentin Dupieux
Written by Quentin Dupieux
Starring David Marsais, Grégoire Ludig, Adèle Exarchopoulos
Out of all the harebrained ideas thought up by desperate dolts, at least the two characters at the center of Quentin Dupieux’s Mandibles can be sure they’re the only ones to come up with this particular get-rich-quick scheme. You wouldn’t expect the director of Rubber, the 2010 killer tire movie featuring the legendary Wings Hauser, to tell a straightforward crime story but you might not predict just how ridiculous the premise would actually be. If Dupieux was the showrunner of a French version of America’s Dumbest Criminals, the lovable vagabonds and their…pet…would surely be in heavy rotation.
Riding the wave of life from one shipwreck to the next, Manu (Ludig) seems content with the beach bum life until he’s offered 500 Euros to take a mysterious briefcase to the coastal mansion of a wealthy elite. Along the way, he steals a car, grabs his bumbling buddy Jean-Gab (Marsais) and sets off as a newly empowered errand boy. Then…they discover a giant four foot fly in the trunk. The normal reaction would be to scream and run but, being the enterprising idiots they are, Manu and Jean-Gab decide to ghost the briefcase gig in favor of training the fly to steal food and money for them. While they work on transforming this miracle of nature into an illegal drone, a classic case of mistaken identity takes place when a group of vacationers think Manu is an old friend. Hiding their new find for the time being, they go along with a new scam for as long as they can until they’re exposed as imposters.
Sweetly named Dominique, the giant fly has an impressive range of emotions thanks to some effective puppetry that guides it to behave more like a loyal dog than a dangerous insect that could potentially eat your face off or throw up on your hand and eat it. Dominique never feels dangerous at all, actually, especially when it sneaks off to lap up some pool water or curl up hidden under blankets. Curiously, it is incredibly hangry and constantly needs feeding in the same way that Manu and Jean-Gab seem obsessed with eating. They never know when they’re going to get their next meal so they rudely stuff their faces to the dismay of the other dinner guests that are slowly realizing that something is off.
There is something inherently likable about the way Dupieux depicts his two moronic stars and Ludig and Marsais’ performances imbue them with a Dude-like sense of purposelessness. In one beach scene in particular, they seem to have invented their own philosophy on the spot reaching a kind of enlightened sense of existence. Manu’s long hair and visible paunch give him a huggable oafish quality that almost seems to be channeling Gerard Depardieu.
They’re just going with the flow which is why they casually react to a giant fly and think why can’t we use this to our advantage? That’s the magic of Mandibles and with Quentin Dupieux’s storytelling in general: Everything just is. The eccentric director is also an ex-DJ and he has a knack for picking an album at random and somehow making it work with another beat. Dominique the fly is about as random as it gets but in a story that sometimes feels out of rhythm, Dupieux lands a perfect ending that just makes you throw up your hands and smile.
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MANDIBLES
Summary
There is something inherently likable about the way Dupieux depicts his two moronic stars and Ludig and Marsais’ performances imbue them with a Dude-like sense of purposelessness.
