Picture Monty Python writ ing an unusually odd “Twilight Zone” episode directed by surrealist Luis Buñuel. Or just empty your mind of all sense: This is “Rubber.”
Consider a film about a tire that gains consciousness, kills a scorpion, drinks from a puddle and rolls down the dusty roads of rural California looking for trouble. Grooving on ’70s lite FM, it falls for a pretty girl. Yet it is misunderstood. Society makes it a lonely desperado, a psychotic avenger that commits multiple acts of depravity and violence. It’s a Michelin maniac.
In an introduction, the tire’s adventures are described as a film of “no reason.” An audience left abandoned and abused in the desert is left to watch it from a distance using binoculars. Soon there is debate about what is real and what is not. People’s minds are blown, but only literally.
From French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux (a k a Mr. Oizo), “Rubber” is a zigzaggy jolt of absurdism that is basically a one-joke situation. Yet the joke is pretty funny thanks to a charismatic star that is always bouncy and never flat. Call it radial chic. You will never disrespect a forlorn tire lying by the roadbed again.