film review: CIFF: rubber

Review by Kimberley Carey

Rubber is a hilarious post-modern film with a truly unique premise; a rubber tyre experiences homicidal urges and also discovers telekinetic abilities, allowing it to blow things up.  Such as heads.

Rather that just a gory show of ridiculousness, Rubber offers more than that for anyone willing to free their mind to the realm of obscurity.

The film begins with a policeman talking to the audience, us, but also the other audience, the audience watching the show that we are, while we watch them watch the show in which they occasionally become entwined with. Still with me? The dialogue is filled with philosophical observations about the viewer and the viewed, reality vs. fiction, and all that stuff about life being a show.

Rubber is also a film that is beautifully shot and inventively put together. The evil tyre, Robert, is extraordinarily given life and personality.  Plus he does some weird vibrating thing, which we learn means he is about to blow something up – with the aid of sinister music of course. Colour, light and texture are all put to good use in making this film aesthetically interesting, and the director gets everything he can out of the desert setting.

The plot is too nonsensical and also unimportant to reiterate here, though it does do a decent job of not becoming too ridiculous and incoherent that you can’t keep up. Rather than bogging itself down with gore and over the top wanky post-modernist stuff – which it is in danger of doing – it gives us just enough, so that the humour of the premise isn’t overwhelmed.  The audience can still laugh at the film.  For example, when Robert gets all emotional when he comes across a tyre-burning yard.   Or when he is reincarnated as a tricycle, his little pedals spinning menacingly as he travels down the road.

Rubber is a thoroughly enjoyable film, and also one that can be viewed no matter what mood you’re in, or what you decide to take from it.