* Illustration: Cordy Chase * View Slideshow Take a dirt nap, Heavy Metal. Daft Punk is doing for midnight movies what the French electronica maestros did for disco: injecting the faded genre with their own brand of vitamin Cool. Electroma, a futuristic noir set in a desolate California suburb inhabited solely by robots, features a meandering plot (a pair of melancholic androids go on an odyssey to become human), no real actors (two production assistants play the chrome-domed leads), and zero dialog. But what it lacks in narrative it makes up for in style. For their budget meditation on an automaton dystopia, Daft's Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo took inspiration from Magritte, Luis Buñuel, and Stanley Kubrick. "It's about technology versus humanity and the place of technology in our lives," Bangalter says. "Audiences who don't speak the same language can still experience the film in the exact same way without any subtitles."
One element that won't get lost in translation: Electroma's killer soundtrack. Unlike the duo's first film project, the Japanimation rock-opera Interstella 5555, Daft skipped doing its own score in favor of an eclectic playlist that includes tracks from Chopin, Brian Eno, Todd Rundgren, and Curtis Mayfield. After a limi ted US run in September, *Electroma *will be released on DVD early next year. Then, as LCD Soundsystem might put it, Daft Punk really will be playing at your house.
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