Playtime (1967)

I knew very little about this in advance save that it was a comedy and French (although you can hardly miss the latter of these once the film begins), and so I spent the first ten minutes not knowing what I was looking at. Confused cat was confused. Even after I began to get a handle on the style, the first half hour, so a full quarter of the run time, is a very gentle introduction to the absurd nature of the world that is being created for us.

By the time we reach the extended restaurant sequence which occupies most of the second half of the film I was enjoying it on two levels - firstly the visual comedy, which leans heavily on forced perspectives and choice of camera angles to give viewers a sight of something silly happening that the characters remain unaware of, or sometimes the impression that something silly is happening when in fact it is not, and then the humour comes from the realisation that you were misdirected.

If that doesn't sound that funny written like that, then all I can say is that I would have probably agreed with you before I watched the film, but the relentless pace and imagination on display in virtually every shot and frame is what lifts it up from faintly amusing to laugh-out-loud funny. There are several running gags - one with a chair, and several involving glass doors. It's mostly very gentle humour - the most violent moment is when a character walks into said glass door, and spends the rest of the film with their nose bandaged. Monty Python would later (c.1974) use this same gag in the season four Michael Ellis episode - I wonder if this was parallel creation or if one (or more) of them was a fan.

The second level I enjoyed this on was in seeing one of the most sixties things imaginable this side of The Prisoner - trust the French to fill their satire on 20th century capitalism with a restaurant scene in which the mannys (particularly the women) all wear the most chic '60s fashions of the time and therefore make capitalism look like the business. 1967 was of course the height of the 1960s, and this film helps make the decade look stunning.

The main character, Mr Hulot, kept reminding me of Michael "Tinker" Aldridge in both general appearance and mannerisms, which was a little distracting. Perhaps this is because this was the first of Jacques Tati's films I had seen so I had no prior experience of or attachment to the character. The female lead is an American woman called Barbara, and her distinctive '60s hairstyle just makes me think that somewhere out there on the internets there must be a fanfic in which Ian and Barbara cross over with Mr Hulot.

"It's an illusion. It must be."