It's been nine years since French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet last made a movie, and he's a long way from the height of his Oscar-nominated success with Amelie. Jeunet still focuses on colorful whimsy, but that focus is bizarrely misguided in his dystopian sci-fi comedy Bigbug. At the beginning of his career, Jeunet collaborated with co-director Marc Caro on visionary sci-fi/fantasy films Delicatessen and City of Lost Children. Netflix'sBigbug aims to recapture some of that spirit, and it's much brighter and louder than Jeunet's early work.
Set in 2045, Bigbug takes place within a suburban house in an anonymous tract where every home looks exactly the same. Jeunet and his longtime co-writer Guillaume Laurant are vague on many of the world's details. Intelligent androids are ubiquitous. Some are household servants whereas others are government operatives. One A.I. appears to be running for president. On one hand, this seems like a utopia where humans have lavish retirement packages that allow robots to take over their jobs. On the other hand, the military/government androids, known as the Yonyx, are increasingly intent on eliminating humans.
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Bigbug doesn't widen its perspective beyond the handful of people stuck in this one home during the possible robot uprising. The home's owner is Alice (Elsa Zylberstein), who's entertaining a potential paramour, Max (Stéphane de Groodt), while Max's bored teenage son, Leo (Hélie Thonnat), rolls his eyes at the pathetic middle-aged divorcees and speaks in awkward future slang. The family is interrupted by the arrival of Alice's ex-husband, Victor (Youssef Hajdi), and his vapid fiancee, Jennifer (Claire Chust). The pair plan to drop off Alice and Victor's teenage daughter, Nina (Marysole Fertard), before going on a honeymoon followingVictor's voluntary retirement.
The group is rounded out by busybody neighbor Francoise (Isabelle Nanty), who arrives to retrieve her dog. However, she's soon trapped inside the house with everyone else when the AI that controls the doors determines that the threat level outside is too high for anyone to leave. There are news reports about self-driving cars deliberately heading into a traffic jam, but otherwise, the precise danger isn't entirely clear. Every time the characters try to tune in to news coverage, the TV instead automatically switches to a show called hom*o Ridiculus, showinghuman contestants are subject to humiliating behavior by the menacing Yonyx -- all of whom are played by Francois Levantal.
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Jeunet depicts all of this in a garish, sickly-sweet color palette that embraces its obvious artificiality. The CGI effects are entirely unconvincing, but Jeunet seems unconcerned with creating a believable or coherent world. In contrast to the grimy, tactile settings of Delicatessen and City of Lost Children, Bigbug's locations are weightless and antiseptic. Despite the potential downfall of civilization happening,Bigbug's characters are more interested in petty relationship dramas. Bigbug often plays like a French bedroom farce that happens to involve androids.
Maybe some of the comedy has been lost in translation from French to English, but Bigbug is more shrill than witty. The actors all give broad performances full of mugging -- though, thankfully, Levantal's rictus-like smile as the Yonyx is meant to be creepy. With their metal bodies and partially exposed human faces, the Yonyx look like Robocop without his helmet. There's a certain menace to their maniacal assertions that they know what is best for humanity.
Bigbug isn't a horror movie or even a thriller, really, despite the escalation of the Yonyx threat in the third act. Jeunet still plays with philosophical quandaries via the household androids that yearn to be human to better protect their owners. But that theme is underdeveloped, and the behavior from the sympathetic androids is inconsistent, encompassing whatever Jeunet can play for laughs. There was a time when a new movie from Jeunet would be a major event, but his visionary creativity suffers a severe downgrade in Bigbug.It's more baffling than daring, failing to live up to its potential for social commentary or surreal world-building. It's just a bunch of annoying people trapped in a house, making stale jokes about surveillance technology and reality TV.
Watch the possible end of human civilization play out in Bigbug, streaming now on Netflix.
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