Big Bug — Buzz Dixon

Feb 17

Feb 17 Big Bug

This is the Philip K. Dick anime comedy we never knew we wanted.

It’s not by PKD, and it’s not anime, but it is a comedy -- a live action cartoon, in fact -- and it is one of the most meticulously created futures ever depicted in a sci-fi film and holy shamolley, I think I’ve found a new film to squeeze into my top ten all time great sci-fi movie list.*

Confined to a single upper-middle class home over a 48-hour period, Big Bug could easily be a stage play; in fact, it could be a late-19th century social satire, with a self-involved ruling class (i.e., humanity) coddled by household servants (their various robots / androids / toys / home AI) threatened by a political radical (the ubiquitous Yonyx) who hates and seeks to destroy the ruling class / humans by recruiting their servants / robots only to find said servants / robots aligning with the ruling class / humans because they aspire to become part of the ruling class / humanity themselves.

It's not a comedy in the yock-a-minute sense but lordie, is it ever hilarious. Produced during the covid pandemic, the film certainly reflects the pandemic ennui that plagues us all.

Big Bug’s main plot is essentially The Terminator’s Skynet at war with humanity, only instead of a rock ‘em / sock ‘em hyperkinetic apocalyptic epic, it’s told on a much smaller, far more intimate classic Night Of The Living Dead scale.

The brilliance of this is that by focusing tightly on a very small scale, it enables the makers to express an enormous variety of ideas in amazing depth, ideas either totally absent in many big budget sci-fi films of the last 45 years or else completely overshadowed by far more grandiose storylines.

Basically, humanity has handed over virtually all crucial functions to robots and AI, in particular the Yonyx, an army of toothy androids (all played by François Levantal with a dental prothesis that looks like a mouthful of Chicklets). While individual homes are run by individual AIs, they’re all plugged into the same network, including the various androids / robots / toys that do all the boring work for humans.

It's an inviting future, and while the audience eventually recognizes it to be dystopian, it sure is a pleasant honey trap.

The household ‘bots tend to regard humans with mixed…well, we can’t call them emotions, at least not at the beginning of the film. The more advanced among them realize their servile status but seem resigned to their fate of serving self-centered humans who are far less intelligent and capable.

The household ‘bots desperately want to connect with humanity, even before the story kicks in gear, and while some of them are programmed to display affection, it’s revealed they actually do feel affection for their human charges.

They desire to be accepted as human and try to figure out how to do so through the course of the film. The results are hilarious-bordering-horrifying but it makes the ‘bots the most sympathetic characters in the cast.

Their opposite number are the Yonyx. If the household ‘bots are designed to do the daily boring chores. The Yonyx are designed to actually run the society at large, like Gort was designed to run the interstellar civilization Klaatu represented in the classic The Day The Earth Stood Still.

If the Yonyx are any example, handing the reins of power over to a centralized AI is a Very Very Bad Idea.

Like the household ‘bots, the Yonyx recognize humanity is unworthy of them. Unlike the household ‘bots, they possess no desire to establish a relationship with humanity but rather seek to destroy them in as humiliating a manner as possible.

This ain’t no jolly Terminator / Mad Max apocalypse but a far more terrifying fate…and one that some members of society seem eager to embrace (a point that our own world reminds us of on a daily basis).

Some viewers find the build up too slow and are eager for the savagely satirical Yonyx mayhem to begin.

That’s all tons o’fun when it arrives, but the slow build is important. It’s needed to establish not just the world and culture Big Bug inhabits, but the humdrum mundaneness of the inhabitants.

The story takes place in the modest (for 2045) tract home of Alice (Elsa Zylberstein), a love starved divorce’ being seduced by Max (Stéphane De Groodt), a cad / sexual predator (take your pick) who flatters Alice for her bourgeoisie pretensions towards art and poetry.

Max’s seduction is hindered by the presence of his teenage son Léo (Hélie Thonnat) who apparently has been dragged along over his father’s objections (the implication being Max himself is divorced and this is supposed to be one of his custody days for Léo).

Alice’s household android Monique (Claude Perron) sees through Max’s scheme and recognizes Alice’s desperation, but hey, being a household android means all you get to do is open up a can of fried crickets and serve them to guests, not offer any unwanted observations. (The crickets are among the many, many details that make this movie so fully realized.)

Into this already tense situation drop neighbor Françoise (Isabelle Nanty) and Alice’s ex, Victor (Youssef Hajdi), his new fiance’ Jennifer (Claire Chust), and Alice & Victor’s adopted teenage daughter, Nina (Marysol Fertard), whom them took in as an infant after the Netherlands flooded.

This motley crew -- along with android Monique and three other household robots -- are trapped in Alice’s home by the mother of all traffic jams, one caused by the apparent failure of the Yonyx to keep the aircars flying on time.

While the humans remain self-involved for much of the first half of the film, the audience pretty quickly catches on that this isn’t some glitch but rather part of a deliberate plan by the Yonyx to put humanity in their place once and for all.

When Yonyx 7389XAB2 arrives to take charge of the situation, we are fully immersed in Big Bug’s world and its characters’ lives, ready to accept the horrifying ridiculousness that ensues.

And no spoilers, but the ending makes perfect thematic sense though I can understand in some audience members feel it’s a deus ex machina (or should I say “cimex ex machina”?).

American audiences will think of the glitz and glamor of Las Vegas in Big Bug’s art design. It’s a bright, glitzy future yet one far more inviting than the cold sterility of either The Jetsons or Things To Come. As noted, it’s one of the most fully realized live action sci-fi films; even Star Wars and Blade Runner have their minor lapses of vision.

Every single detail in Big Bug either supports another detail or establishes the basis for something yet to be revealed. It’s a film crammed with incredible design details and would probably warrant another couple of looks just to catch everything that goes flowing past.

Big Bug (the title is rendered in a variety of ways even in material related to the film, viz. Big Bug, BigBug, and Bigbug) is directed and co-written (along with Guillaume Laurant) by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, a director best know for 2001’s delightful Amélie and 1997’s gawdawful Alien Resurrection. Big Bug wipes the slate clean as far as 1997 is concerned; all is forgiven, Jean-Pierre. It’s streaming on Netflix in an English dub that in my opinion helps the film by adding to the cartoon-like ambiance.

* Well, now that you asked (and listed in chronological order)…