This. is a crazy film. The main character is a tire that becomes sentient. What does this mean? What does life mean? Does a tubeless tire have a soul? Does it sink or float in a pool? Does it like birds? Can turkeys make good pets? Most of these questions are answered, yet even more are left open...
There’s a random group of people in the desert, introduced to something else in the desert. The show begins. It’s a bit boring at first. There’s a little wind, you can hear it. Observances are made. Tire, meet world! Tire, meet bottle! Tire, meet scorpion! Oh, the joys! Tire grows up so fast! Then, it gets kinda weird.
While this is absolutely an “art-film” kind of endeavor (the opening scene even has a girl mocking the trope if it’s going to be in color or black and white), it’s still extremely well done on a technical level, and a cool continuing intrigue as to what this tire is all about? I can’t fault the somewhat cheese dialogue and sequences, because it does seem intendedly so. I don’t know if you would classify it as meta? It’s odd. It’s unique, kinda surreal. You want to watch a crazy and sometimes darkly humorous flick that won’t depress you like a David Lynchian dryhumping of a deflated corpse of the Michelin Man under three bare light bulbs? Some nice little electronic score and SFX accentuates the sideways nature of it all. Director Dupeieux definitely seems to be a big fan of Cronenberg, though. Why, you ask? No reason.
