Jacques Tati's Playtime (1967)

How do you say 'drugstore' in French? 'Droogstore'. Nothing to do with Kubrick's (or Anthony Burgess's) Clockwork Orange, but everything to do with language mélange à la Christine Brooke-Rose, the insane multi-lingual meaningless non-communication which has always been Jacques Tati's forte. In Tatiland, different cultures meet but don't always correspond, don't understand each other. But then, neither do the old and the new, the old and the young, and yet: isn't the insanity we're talking about not only here and now, but very much more so since Tati's film in 1967?

Playtime is in a sense science fiction, but then so much science fiction is already with us: the world which Tati creates is so familiar. Admittedly, the high-power brush with the headlights seems beyond the beyond, but the multiple button pushing and automatism seem to resemble our computerised existence today; likewise the endless traffic queues, the obsession with taking (an inauthentic) photo every moment.

Glass is ubiquitous here, people bash their noses on it, it (very oddly) reflects the tour Eiffel, the Arc de Triomphe, the Sacré-Cœur, etc. Without any obvious political agenda, Tati turns this film into a huge criticism of the modern world, its uniformity, its mindlessness, its absolute wish to conform and not rebel, its maintenance of the status quo, in effect its insanity. More than ever, we need people such as Tati to tell people to understand where they're going wrong, what is happening to our world. This film is a masterpiece by a genius of the cinema.

Jacques Tati in Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre, Indre (36)

Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre, where Jacques Tati's first full-length film Jour de Fête (1947) was largely filmed, is very much influenced by the film and the director, as the central square and its shops, etc, can't fail to remind us. There's an eponymous museum which shows a film of the making of it, a statue of François the postman (played by Tati himself) stands outside it, and there's even an app giving information on various places shown in the film throughout the small (850 pop.) village. Actor Pierre Richard was guest of honour at the inauguration ceremony at Sainte-Sévère on the 70th anniversary of the film, where a roundabout operated by pedal power (similar to that used in the film) was permanently installed. There's also a roulotte (gypsy caravan) to remind of the fête foraine.

Jacques Tati in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Yvelines (78)

Jacques Tati (1907–82) was born Jacques Tatischeff of French-Russian-Dutch-Italian origin. His family grave is in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and the bicycle tyre is most fitting for a film director well remembered for his early Jour de fête (1949), about a postman on his bicycle going about his normal work (with invitations to drink alcohol), and which obviously heavily influenced the blockbuster by Dany Boon, Bienvenue chez les ch'tis (2008), at least in one particular sequence. A great director of almost silent film comedy. The suggestion, some years ago, that his pipe be airbrushed out of stills of his films, was the suggestion of an idiot.

Dany Boon's Bienvenue Chez les Ch'tis/Welcome to the Sticks (2008)

A French comedy in which much of the humor is based on verbal misunderstandings is bound to lose something in translation, as is the case with this untranslatable title, which in French refers to (the language of or) the people from the north (mainly in the northern half of the Pas-de-Calais département), the Ch'tis (or Chtimis), essentially so called because they tend to pronounce words or syllables beginning with an 's' as 'ch' (or 'sh' to an English ear).

But there is also a great deal of humor of situation, and Dany Boon makes the most of this in a movie set largely in his home territory, which just happens to be a huge recordbreaker as far as French movies in France go.

Post office manager Philippe Abrams (Kad Mérad) works in Provence (some scenes being set in Salon-de-Provence), but his attempts to relocate to the Côte d'Azur by passing off as a handicapped person misfire and he is punished by being sent off to Bergues in the north, leaving behind his wife Julie (Zoe Félix) and their young son.

There are several references to other movies: before leaving, in a scene which recalls Marlon Brando in The Godfather, Philippe consults his wife's great-uncle, who in semi-darkness informs him that temperatures in the north can reach below 60; on his fearful arrival in Bergues, buildings take on the distorted nature of those in some German Expressionist movies (The Cabinet of Dr Caligari?); and the most obvious homage is to Jacques Tati's Jour de Fête, with its cycling postman, especially when he accepts drinks from the people he delivers mail to.

Cutting to the quick, Philippe's anticipations of the cold north disappear like morning frost as he is warmly accepted into Ch'ti society. There may initially be a few blips when he fears Antoine (Dany Boon) is a mad transvestite, or when he has to cope with the smell of the local maroilles cheese, or eating outside at 'Friterie "Momo"', but he soon adapts to life in the north to the extent that he even forgets it's the weekend, and the driving distance between Bergues and Provence shrinks by about 400 kilometers to make the round trip feasible, but hey, this is the movies, isn't it?

I thoroughly enjoyed thish one, although I guesh it ish not sho eashy if you have to conshentrate on shubtitlsh, ash it musht be sho frushtrating. Sherioushly, ish shuper!

One bitch on subtitling: 'connasse' = 'bitch'? Oh yeah? If you want to pass a certain certification maybe, but...

Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis:
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Dany Boon's Bienvenue Chez les Ch'tis
Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, Bergues, Nord

Jacques Tati, Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, Val-de-Marne (94), France

One of my favorite movie directors is Jacques Tati, so I was delighted to discover, quite by chance as I was coming away from Rabelais's tower, some models based on Tati's Mon oncle. The reason, I later found out through Googling, was because the movie was filmed here.

A few years ago I read that in a poster Tati's pipe, in politically correct genuflection, had been airbrushed into a children's model windmill, so it's pleasing to see no such nonsense here, and that the dog is holding the man's pipe for him.