Time travel, the ravages of ageing, and electronic wangs all form part of the story in the latest off-the-wall film from Rubber director Quentin Dupieux.
Middle-aged couple Alain (Alain Chabat) and Marie (Léa Drucker) decide on their dream home when the estate agent shows them a unique selling point. In the basement is a hole, which you can climb down and find yourself in the same house – only 20 minutes in the future. When you return to the regular timeline you’re also two days younger. Marie starts to have an unhealthy obsession with the metaphysical marvel, much to Alain’s despair. Meanwhile, Alain’s boss happily reveals that he’s had an electronic knob installed in Japan, which you can control with your mobile phone.
Dupieux’s continues his streak of bizarre movies with this light-hearted but poignant tale that has a Charlie Kaufman quality. There are interesting points made about accepting the ageing process and the insane pursuit of eternal youth as Marie spends more and more time in the near-future side of the house in the hope of the modelling career she wanted when she was younger. More hilarious is Gégé (Benoît Magimel), the boss with the bionic dick. Far from being embarrassed, he gleefully brings it up (the topic, ahem) at a dinner party and is paranoid that the couple is not impressed.
The writer/director doesn’t labour his points but leaves no doubt about the harmful effects of the two characters’ obsessions. More concerned with the humanity of the situation than the science, he makes no attempt to rationalise the time-hopping phenomena and just provides an entertaining and thought-provoking 90 minutes.
Incredible But True is available to stream on Arrow and is released on Blu-ray on December 5th.


