[The last movie of the /slash Filmfestival.]

Rubber is the newest film by Quentin Dupieux. It stars Stephen Spinella, Jack Plotnick, Roxane Mesquida and Wings Hauser.

Plot:
A mixed group of people stand in the desert, awaiting some kind of spectacle. A policeman (Stephen Spinella) gives them a quick introduction that this movie will be a hommage to “No Reason” and then an accountant (Jack Plotnick) hands out binoculars and they start to watch. The film they’re seeing is about a tyre which comes alive, discovers that it has telepathic abilities, falls in love with a woman (Roxane Mesquida) and finally goes on a murderous rampage.

Rubber is weird, but in a good way. It’s a winning combination of humor, ideas, meta-ness and sheer what the fuck that might not be as deep as it wants to be, but is definitely as entertaining.

Rubber could have easily gone way over the top and ended up on the pretentious side of artsiness. Fortunately, Dupieux sets the atmosphere with the first monologue – pitch-perfectly delivered by Stephen Spinella. It seems a valid meditation on the arbitrariness of movies, and then becomes quickly so absurd that you can’t help but laugh.

And the whole movie is that way. It goes for so many metaphors that it just ends up being funny, and most of its (intended?) depth disappears – but the entertainment values rises for it.

Unfortunately, what the movie obviously lacked was the funding for a good cast. With the exception of Stephen Spinella and Jack Plotnick, most of the actors were wooden in their performances and seemed to be amateurs. It didn’t hurt the movie much, but it didn’t help either.

The only thing that I really didn’t like was that the tyre falls in love with a woman. I mean, why would it? It’s a tyre for crying out loud and it’s not said that the female human form is universally appealing (though men sure seem to think so). I would have liked it better if it would have fallen in love with a plastic bottle. A bicycle. Another tyre. Or pretty much anything else.

Summarising: Worth watching, but probably only for a certain audience.