It
is the story of a man and his dog, but do not expect Lassie from provocateur Quentin Dupieux, a.k.a. Mr. Oizo. He cast off all logic-based constraints and
was creatively liberated for it, to judge by the distinctively strange results
in Wrong (trailer here), which opened
today in New York.
Dolph
Springer’s dog Paul has mysteriously vanished.
His neighbor is less than sympathetic, because he is too busy going
mad. He is not the only one. Eventually, it seems Paul was kidnapped by
Master Chang, a tripped out New Age guru, for reasons that defy conventional
reason, but make perfect sense in this world.
Springer’s gardener, a pizzeria girl, and a detective also careen in and
out of the film, in ways that cannot be explained in a lucid thumbnail
description.
In
his somewhat notorious Rubber (the
killer tire movie), Dupieux came up with an eccentric premise and a clever
twist, but seemed too hemmed in by the circumstances he created. In contrast, throughout Wrong he allows anything to happen, whether it makes objective
sense or not. The resulting absurdity is
quite entertaining to behold.
Jack
Plotnick is a heck of a good sport. For Wrong to work, he has to play it all
relatively straight, while everyone else acts insane. In fact, he brings an earnest sincerity to
Springer that is rather endearing. Prison Break’s William Fichtner clearly
enjoys hamming up Master Chang’s wacked out Zen, while Alexis Dziena plays Emma
from the pizza shop appropriately over-the-top, like a sweetly innocent version
of Fatal Attraction’s Alex Forrest.
Wrong is stylistically
surreal and subversive, but rather gentle in tone, which is why it works so
well. Unlike David Lynch’s Lost Highway, it never leaves viewers
bereft of faith or hope. Indeed,
Springer is sort of an everyman model of stick-to-itiveness that is actually
sort of refreshing.