Gallic dance duo Daft Punk have made a slow but powerful film about two existential robots. It doesn't even feature their music, but it's not as daft as it sounds, they tell David O'Mahony

Trying something new, says Guy-Manuel De Homem-Christo, one half of Gallic house music act Daft Punk, "is both surprising for the audience, and for us." He's talking about Daft Punk's Electroma, the pair's debut film feature.

A pop band diversifying into movie-making is hardly original - see The Beatles, Zappa, Zeppelin and countless others; what is exceptional here is the group's wilful derailment of their loyal fans' expectations.

No strangers to cinema, Daft Punk commissioned visual works to complement their first two albums - Homework (1995) and Discovery (2000) - in the shape of D.A.F.T and Intersteller 5555, respectively. However, their most recent album, Human after All, failed to set dancefloors - or cash registers - alight. The robot-suited duo have now directed a bone fide arthouse film. Existing somewhere between Gus Van Sant's Gerry and Bruno de Mont's interminable 29 Palms, Electroma is slow - glacial, even - dialogue-free, and features no music from Daft Punk. Yet it is also a hypnotic, strangely moving experience that builds to a finale of no little power. So, what's it all about?

"When we made the movie," says Christo, "we didn't theorise or think about it too much. We wanted to pose a question to the audience. Even us, we have no explanation for the movie; people, after they see it, they come to us with explanations."

Well, here's mine: adopting the conventions of the road movie, Electroma focuses on the efforts of two robots to become human. When latex faces are grafted onto their anonymous visors, the pair are ostracised by the robot populace of a suburban idyll, and forced into an existential trek across stark desert terrain, a journey which has as its climax a suicide pact.

Says Christo: "People feel the ending where the robots try to kill themselves is very depressing, but I'm not sure that robots can commit suicide." Indeed.

Whatever one's reaction to Electroma, it is an undeniably sophisticated piece of work and one which represents the culmination of a cinematic learning curve for Christo and his partner Thomas Bangalter. "When we did our first album we made some videos with Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry and Roman Coppola. We learnt from them about the filming process. For the second album we supervised a series of films in manga - 14 short episodes that together make up an entire film. It was not filming, but it taught us about the storytelling process.

"For the third album, Human after All, we decided to direct the videos ourselves, and from this experience, everything for Electroma came together. Step by step, from the first album to now, it was a gradual process to finally making our own movie. Every album and every project brought us closer to this film."

The absence of Daft Punk's music from the soundtrack confirms the duo's high-minded intentions for their film, and insulates them from accusations that Electroma is a promotional tool. The music they have chosen for it is, like a good compilation tape, eclectic and surprising. There's Todd Rungren; there's Brian Eno. How did they pick and choose?

"We really enjoyed that challenge. After the film was shot, it was great to just browse through our record collections to find the right music for the right sequences. Most of them are tracks from the 1960s and 1970s, and some of them are quite obscure. We are really happy to share them with the audience, and maybe they will be introduced to some music they are unaware of. Maybe some Daft Punk fans do not know Brian Eno, so we were happy to introduce them to his music."

And what of the Daft Punk fans who might feel alienated by the sight of their dancefloor heroes trying to kill each other in a desert?

"Since we started Daft Punk, both the music and visual elements, we have tried to never do the same thing twice. We are always happy when people follow us on a different path. Making a film with a really slow pace was a big challenge for us, especially as we had decided to include no Daft Punk music. The film is slow, meditative and contemplative; this is the opposite of what we have achieved visually in the past."

Having carved out a niche in Paris's midnight movie circuit, Electroma seems primed to become a genuine cult. Don't expect its makers to be making rom-coms any time soon.

Daft Punk's Electroma is at the Irish Film Institute, Dublin on August 10th-11th