Les robots sont fous! – a review of BigBug

Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Written by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Guillaume Laurant

Produced by Frédéric Doniguian, Richard Grandpierre

Starring

Isabelle Nanty as Françoise

Elsa Zylberstein as Alice

Claude Perron as Monique

Stéphane De Groodt as Max

Youssef Hajdi as Victor

Claire Chust as Jennifer

François Levantal as Yonyx leader

Alban Lenoir as Greg

Marysole Fertard as Nina

Hélie Thonnat as Léo

Dominique Pinon as Igor

Cinematography Thomas Hardmeier

Edited by Hervé Schneid

Production companies: Eskwad, Gaumont Film Company

I’ve encountered two movies this week that are each just about impossible to describe, but in wildly different ways. It was a good week that way. I’m going to deal with a Netflix science fiction film first and discuss the other one in a separate review.

BigBug is described in a somewhat-taken-aback Wikipedia page as being “Set in the world of 2045, where communities have robotic helpers, a group of suburbanites are locked in for their own protection by their household robots, while a rogue, sentient AI android revolt uprising outside.”

Normally, I might have shrugged and moved on. It sounded like a fairly derivative plot, a rehash of R.U.R. and Ice Storm.

But then I spotted the director’s name: Jean-Pierre Jeunet. He directed two of my absolute favorite films a few years back: the dark and hilarious Delicatessen, and the much-beloved Amélie.

OK, safe to assume this wasn’t going to be one of those dreadful studio retreads from the SyFy channel or whatever it calls itself this week.

And in fact, it isn’t. It’s brilliant, dark, horrifying—and hilarious.

Start with the household robots. One is a bit like the “mother” from Umbrella Academy only with a terrifying George Kennedy grin. Einstein vaguely resembles the head of the physicist mounted on eight tentacles, but only vaguely. The fact that you can actually see a similarity is perhaps the most disturbing thing. There’s a vacuum cleaner robot who would have looked right at home in MST3K. And there’s a cute little child-companion robot who may just be a leading cause of inculcated sociopathy.

They are grotesque and alarming. And they’re the good less evil robots. Then there is the eeeevil leader of the Yonyx, played by the utterly matchless French character actor François Levantal. He also plays the Yonyx army. He is Farscape’s Scorpius on steroids.

The robots are grotesque and weird and in various ways, deeply dysfunctional. But then, they are our creations, aren’t they? Born in the image of the maker and all that.

The humans trapped in the retro-ultramodern home start out normal enough, but time and being in a Jeunet movie take their toll. As do the AI household appliances, although not in the way you might expect.

In an effort to confuse the AIs with fallacious reasoning the people manage to convince the AIs that they are in fact human, and as humans, must aid and comfort the people in any way possible. Except for just letting them out, of course. That was hardwired in.

So the AIs try sympathy. They try affection. They try caring. Finally, they try seduction. Oddly enough, this is mostly unsuccessful. Mostly.

I predict this will do better in Europe and Canada who are sort of used to the French. For those of us who are, this movie is a right treat.

There’s even a Jack Russell who pulls a Elon Musk on an air-borne McLaren.

Think Fifth Element meets MST3K meets Monty Python, and you might come within a few parsecs of grasping the tone of this movie. It’s Jeunet.

Now on Netflix.