Incredible But True
A new house means a new start for married couple Alain and Marie Duval; without children or pets, it is perhaps more spacious than what they were looking for but the estate agent has a surprise for them in the basement, something incredible but true: a hatch, beneath which lies a tunnel which not only opens twelve hours in the future but makes the traveller three days younger.
Alain focused on his work, the obligations of the present, the tunnel is of no more than passing interest, but to Marie it becomes an obsession, almost abandoning her husband to run the house and pay the bills as she presses ever further into the future while growing younger with every passage, looking on the tunnel as a rejuvenation machine which will give her eternal life and youth.
His last two films Deerskin and Mandibles (Mandibules) having dealt with mid-life crises and the unorthodox behaviour of those under the scrutiny of his camera, so eccentric writer/director Quentin Dupieux continues with Incredible But True (Incroyable mais vrai), though for once it is the man who is relatively content even as his wife secedes from their marriage.
Starring La Science des rêves‘ Alain Chabat and War of the Worlds‘ Léa Drucker as Alain and Marie, they are counterpointed by La Vie est un long fleuve tranquille‘s Benoît Magimel as Gérard, Alain’s overbearing boss, surrounding himself with status symbols, fast cars and younger women, among them Une nouvelle amie‘s Anaïs Demoustier as lingerie saleswoman Jeanne.
Gérard enthusiastically embracing the extreme to maintain his masculine virility as blindly as Marie abandons herself to the tunnel without understanding the process or the possible side-effects, like Dupieux’s previous films which it resembles Incredible But True is a whimsy built upon a consciously ridiculous but flimsy premise which never develops beyond the microcosm it occupies.
The strands puttering forward without clear direction before a montage mercifully accelerates the final act, like his aimless characters Dupieux is not a disciplined writer, Incredible But True presumably acknowledging that all things must pass and those those who accept that may be happier than those who fight it yet from a director who is increasingly complacent in his echo chamber.
Incredible But True will be available on Blu-ray from Arrow from Monday 7th November
