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Francois Truffaut has always been vocal about his love for Alfred Hitchcock, and that love was more than apparent in some of his films, including The Soft Skin which is filled with such Hitchcockian elements as adultery, betrayal, revenge and murder. However, that said, despite the seemingly pulpy content, the finely photographed movie is suffused with such distinctly French archetypes and sensibilities as softness, freewheeling tone, intellectual conversations, and understated emotional depth. Pierre (Jean Desailly) is a respected and well-known literary critic. He’s been married to Franca for 15 years and has a cute little girl. However, he throws his well-set life to the winds when he falls for a pretty, much younger air stewardess Nicole while he’s on his way to Lisbon to deliver a lecture on, you guessed it, Balzac. Pierre tries to keep his illicit tryst a secret for a time, but that turns out to be wishful thinking. Initially his wife starts suspecting which inevitably leads to the breakdown of their marriage. And when she gets confirmation of his affair, tragic and chilling repercussions ensue. The filmmaking is marked with restraint, the characters have been well etched so as to make them believable, and the acting is entirely naturalistic. All said and done, it might not rank among Truffaut’s greatest works, but it certainly was not because of any dearth of quality or good intent.
Director: Francois Truffaut
Genre: Drama/Romantic Drama
Language: French
Country: France
If Mr. Hulot’s Holiday was a refreshing comedy and Mon Oncle a lovely concoction of comedy and mild satire, Playtime, the third film in Tati’s brilliant Monsieur Hulot series, was a raging satire of the highest order – a cringing body blow against incessant automation and ultra-modernization. Unlike in the previous two films, the Paris we all know of is completely invisible here; instead what we have is a gray, wan, drab and utterly impersonal urban jungle of glass, steel and gadgets, and a never-ending stream of automobiles. And in this immensely dreary post-modern world, Hulot seems to be comically and anachronistically out of place – a nostalgic symbol of a lost era. The film is filled with some terrific gags and set-pieces, with the runaway winners being an elaborate, carnivalesque sequence at an upscale, recently refurbished restaurant, and one of the most unforgettable traffic jams ever recorded on screen. Its greatest achievement is that, despite being filled with blistering satire and sulphureous ironies, the message is never in-your-face, as they have been beautifully masqueraded through amazing wit and humour. Sadly for us cinephiles, because of its ambitious scale and radical scope, this movie nearly destroyed Tati’s career as a filmmaker par excellence.
Director: Jacques Tati
Genre: Comedy/Social Satire/Urban Comedy
Language: French
Country: France
Mon Oncle, Jacques Tati’s followup to Mr. Hulot’s Vacation – which introduced the endearing character of Monsieur Hulot to the world of cinema – was, like the latter, an audio-visual spectacle of the first order. However, unlike the latter, which was lighter and more freewheeling in tone and feel, this one seemed to me Tati’s version of Chaplin’s Modern Times. Shot in glorious colours, this high farce is at a delightful mixture of immensely funny gags and searing social satire. Set in an unknown point of time in Paris, the film placed the bumbling and lovable eponymous character at the unique juncture between carefree and joyous lives of the common Parisians, and the ultra-modern, gadget-filled mansion of his brother-in-law. And, while the dichotomy and contrast between these two worlds provide loads of laughter, they also show how incessant automation might make life easy while dehumanizing it at the same time. Meanwhile his brother-in-law employs him at his factory, and as expected, his presence is enough to hit the factory’s best-laid disciplined environment for a toss, albeit inadvertently. Tati wasn’t just spot-on as the pipe-smoking and ever-so-courteous Hulot, the support cast too was incredible in portraying the series of idiosyncratic characters that populate the film. Though uniformly filled with hilarious gags, the mischievous acts of the children and the party sequence provided the maximum number of laughters for me.
Director: Jacques Tati
Genre: Comedy/Social Satire/Slapstick
Language: French
Country: France
Though not as universally popular as Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp, master French filmmaker Jacques Tati’s creation Monsieur Hulot too remains an unforgettable character where slapstick comedy goes. Mr. Hulot’s Holiday introduced cinephiles to the friendly and polite, albeit bumbling, socially awkward and accident-prone, everyman and the eponymous character of the film. When Mr. Hulot visits a pleasant French countryside retreat for vacation, it is inevitable that mishaps will occur, and they form the basis for the immense enjoyment that the movie provides. Never one to indulge in over-dramatisation or racous fun, Tati filled the film with hilarious gags that make you laugh through their brilliant ideation, wit, subtle gestures and unadulterated humour – the brilliance of imagination and execution certainly ensured that the viewers would roll on the floor with laughter. The sequence which introduced us, and the unfortunate hotel guests, to Hulot, and the one where he decides to display his tennis skills, are acts of pure genius and parts of cinematic folklore. In fact, the movie is filled with a multitude of moments that would stay with the viewers, including even something as mundane as the opening and closing of a door! The film has very little in terms of dialogues; consequently it is more akin to the pure entertainment of silent era comedies which had to rely solely on audio-visual interplay. Tati was equally memorable as an actor, as he himself played the perennially pipe-smoking, unwittingly clumsy and thoroughly indelible protagonist of this astounding masterpiece.
Director: Jacques Tati
Genre: Comedy/Slapstick
Language: French
Country: France
To call the acclaimed French filmmaker Oliver Assayas’ Carlos an epic would be an understatement because, its 5 ½ hours length might seem formidable even to those accustomed to watching epic films regularly. The film deals with the rise and fall of the infamous political assassin Carlos who, as we all know, is now languishing in prison. Employing incredible research work, the film has pieced together the life of one of the most enigmatic persons of the last century through terrific storytelling. The director has resorted to cinema-verite, giving the film the feel of a documentary. Thus, by being ripped off of any unnecessary melodrama and by being a fiercely honest portrayal of the man without any ounce of judging him, the film has succeeded in making Carlos seem like a frighteningly real man of flesh and blood. Divided into three parts, this episodic portrayal of the infamous terrorist’s rise through the ranks, his attempts (which often are successful) at some outrageous and spectacular acts of violence, his pop-culture celebrity-hood, his comparative stagnation after being ousted from the Palestinian group he was part of, and finally his slow decline after massive changes took place in the world order post the collapse of Soviet empire. Edgar Ramirez has given a tour-de-force performance as Carlos in this visceral, violent, anarchic and thoroughly outstanding piece of work.
Director: Oliver Assayas
Genre: Drama/Crime Drama/Epic/Biopic/TV Miniseries
Languages: French/German/Arabic
Country: France/Germany
