‘Incredible But True’ Review: Quentin Dupieux Delivers A More Grounded Post-Comedy Comedy [Berlin Film Festival]

Few directors are better equipped to make an interesting and entertaining film in the middle of a pandemic than Quentin Dupieux. Seemingly unperturbed by this “new normal,” the French filmmaker continues on his recent string of cost-effective but impactful films, each revolving around a simple but conceptually bold ‘what if’ scenario, with “Incredible But True,” premiering in the Special Gala section of this year’s Berlin International Film Festival.

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Though the film does not feature facemasks or elbow bumps, its thematic concerns feel directly inspired by the pandemic, more specifically by the changing relationship with time that lockdowns in particular have inspired in many of us. Alain (Alain Chabat) and his wife Marie (Léa Drucker) are first seen visiting a big house, and already Dupieux plays with the linearity of time by integrating, in the middle of that visit, glimpses of scenes showing the couple already moved in and celebrating their new home. It’s a startling approach that definitely keeps the viewer intrigued, but in the context of a filmography that fetishizes and finds great offbeat humor in the banal, the boring, and the repetitive, it is also slightly alarming.

Intercut with Alain and Marie’s visit and move is another scene, showing the two of them at the doctors as they struggle, for an absurdly long time, to find the words to explain what their situation is — the film cuts to the title card before they’ve managed to articulate anything. Like Dupieux’s previous work, the film is full of such ridiculously empty, mundane moments, hilarious in the way they upend our expectations for film characters to be witty or at least in some way interesting. People in Dupieux’s films often say impossibly uncool things, even if they do not always reach for the surreal level of absurdity attained in his previous film “Mandibles.” “Incredible But True” is more firmly grounded in reality, as though the director’s attention to the trite every day had been further sharpened by the forced repetitiveness of lockdown. If “killer style” in “Deerskin” was such a tacky line as to almost become a catchphrase, Dupieux here deliberately avoids all gimmicks and his unflinching focus on the utterly trivial almost feels like post-comedy comedy.

Seeing a cast of accomplished, prestigious actors deliver incredibly banal dialogue is thrilling in itself, especially in the case of renowned comedian Alain Chabat (to give a sense of his comic range, he once played a dog turned into a man, in “Didier”). His Alain is the most level-headed of all the characters. He is unfazed even when the scientific anomaly at the center of this high concept film is revealed: in the house’s basement is a hatch which, though the short journey does not involve climbing up, somehow leads to a hole in the ceiling on the first floor, and makes the traveler three days younger, 12 hours forward into the future.

In a more spectacular film, Alain’s affable nature would feel all the more incongruous due to the rejuvenating time machine in his basement. But Dupieux, a director who has always been attuned to the absurd humor and casual beauty of the every day, effortlessly aligns us with Alain’s perspective. He has no interest in this machine: it can’t help him with any of the things he actually cares about, namely doing good work at the office and spending the rest of his time with his wife. When the latter becomes increasingly obsessed with the ability to gain her youth back, three days at a time, he does not protest for long. It seems as though Alain would never presume to have a say on how others should choose to spend their days, not even the woman who once promised to spend the rest of her life with him.

He is similarly open-minded when it comes to his boss and best friend Gérard (Benoît Magimel), an apparently comfortable alpha male who reveals, after another surreal delay, that he’s had his penis replaced with an electronic member — “you can steer it,” among many other functionalities. The scene is so natural as to feel unscripted, but Dupieux is in fact extremely perceptive about the mix of over-familiarity and extreme politeness used to conceal, in conversations between friends (especially couple friends), a desperate desire to impress.

Gérard’s electronic penis and Marie’s time travel are clear manifestations of their fear of aging, but Dupieux avoids the judgmental and the reactionary by showing these two people as well-rounded human beings ultimately trapped by their insecurities. Gérard, for example, is seen anxiously questioning his girlfriend Jeanne (Anaïs Demoustier) at home about his friends’ reaction to the news. An incident at a shooting range is a ludicrous but touching glimpse at just how deeply ingrained his desire for youthful vitality is. Marie’s rage at Alain’s indifference about the time machine is funny, but it is also sincere.

Time, to them, is an enemy, and Dupieux’s playful editing from the beginning of the film returns with a vengeance near the end in a montage sequence showing the fates of all involved. The implication that not Alain nor anyone else could force them off their self-destructive path is heartbreaking. The title card at the end, reconnecting this offbeat comedy to our reality, is haunting. [A]

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