Alain and Marie are being shown a house when the realtor reveals a secret duct cover by a hatch in the basement.

“When you go down the duct, you jump twelve hours ahead in time,” he says.

But, he teases, “In addition to the jump, something even wilder occurs.” 

And so begins Incredible But True, a little science fiction film written and directed by Frenchman Quentin Dupieux.

In the genre of science fiction, perhaps my favorite sub-genre is time travel, but it is rarely done well, at least in the movies, and is usually responsible for some of the worst movies ever made, such as the idiotic Back to the Future.

When done well, however, time travel tales can be very satisfying indeed.

Given that Incredible But True, only deals with travel into the future, it avoids the stupidities of most time travel movies (i.e., changing the past without offering even a semi-plausible rationale for doing so).

The film has a second plot thread where Alain’s boss has traveled to Japan to obtain a truly incredible operation on, well, a very intimate body part.

It’s rather like two Twilight Zone episodes smushed together, one reasonably serious, the other played strictly for laughs.

It’s a French film, so of course most of the characters smoke like Mad Men and an English speaker requires subtitles to view it, but there is an extended 15 minute sequence near the end entirely sans dialogue which is extremely funny; I’m still chuckling over one of the sight gags.

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