In the distant future – perhaps not so distant – the comfortable little life of Alice and her six guests turns into a nightmare. The failure of the automated system on which everything rests, from the air conditioning to the opening of the doors, is not the consequence of a technical glitch. The cause is deep: androids are revolting and threatening human life.
This film, whose title evokes a major breakdown, is another good move from Netflix, which is establishing its leading role as producer and broadcaster. Shot during the pandemic, but imagined before its outbreak, BigBug nevertheless illustrates the announced cataclysm of cinema in theaters. Its appearance on the popular platform results in any case from the disagreement between an industry, let’s say more classic, and one of its finest jewels, the independent and daring Jean-Pierre Jeunet (the fabulous destiny of Amélie Poulain).
For his return to directing almost ten years later The extravagant journey of the young and prodigious TS Spivet, Jeunet signs a dystopia that is certainly dark, but against a backdrop of comedy. The former associate of Marc Caro, with whom he revealed himself at the turn of the 1990s, has not lost his taste for extravagance and delirium. The walls have pastel colors, the furniture unfolds and unfolds in more than one form, the libraries abound… with books, a suspicious heresy in an immaterial world.
Choral film with six characters and even more, because it is necessary to count the robots, BigBug lacks neither details nor clues. There we find the good Jeunet, the one who is suffering from this sweet disease to specify the futile – the story takes place on April 25, 2045 – and to promote the flea market, like this robot named Einstein (voice of André Dussollier). There is also the less good, a Jeunet who stays on the surface, mixes the threads and even ends up interrupting himself.
BigBug found his salvation on the small screen. Was it necessary to mimic its pace? The many fades to black that fragment the film into episodes bring out a narrative void. The dramatic tension fades more than once.
All the same, this camera in a house high tech is explosive. It must be said that the people who find themselves there as in a sanitary bubble – outside, they would be in danger – have reasons not to get along. Already the hostess and the man who seeks to seduce her must accept the presence of the ex and his new companion…
Some characters are more colorful than others, notably the not-so-single neighbor, held with aplomb by Isabelle Nanty, a faithful of the director. However, it is the robots in the house that steal the show. Their complicity in trying to make themselves more human gives the best lines, especially in their clumsiness in making humor.
Stung, Jeunet? Undoubtedly, as the bug stems (will stem?) from our blind faith in artificial intelligence. Still, his criticism is dosed, punctuated with nods to history, as if to take the witness to a distant Chaplin. futuristic movie, BigBug has to vintage in the soul. The kitchen, the suburbs and all its cloned houses seen from the air resemble this North America which was “modernized” in the middle of the 20th century.and century. An old computer is restarted, like a bottle thrown into the sea.
And Jeunet salutes our ability to move us, citing French cinema, which has nevertheless turned its back on it. “Garance is the name of a flower / Of a flower as red as your lips”, the famous dialogue of Children heaven will never come from an android, he curses.