Directed by:
Jacques TatiScreenplay:
Jacques TatiComposer:
Francis LemarqueCast:
Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek, Rita Maiden, Yves Barsacq, Reinhard Kolldehoff, Billy Kearns, Alice Field, Laure Paillette, Gilbert Reeb, Michel Francini (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
Jacques Tati’s gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in an age of high technology reached their apotheosis with PlayTime. For this monumental achievement, a nearly three-year-long, bank-breaking production, Tati again thrust the lovably old-fashioned Monsieur Hulot, along with a host of other lost souls, into a baffling modern world, this time Paris. With every inch of its superwide frame crammed with hilarity and inventiveness, PlayTime is a lasting record of a modern era tiptoeing on the edge of oblivion. (Criterion)
(more)Reviews (2)
A film where everything happens very quickly and chaotically, but at the same time nothing happens – just like in the modern, impersonal times it satirically describes. That the work with sound perspective is amazing (as it is) and that every formal choice matches to perfection Tati's symbolic intentions is not enough to make the film a mega-fun and inspiring classic. There are some really great ideas, and the restaurant scene is certainly good, but I can't shake the feeling that it's disproportionately drawn out, and that if I were to film me and my friends' nightlife, the mise-en-scène would have offered far greater and more numerous gems to laugh at, in every sense…
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Jacques Tati's films are so specific that you feel like you are watching someone who understood the world so uniquely that either you tune into his wavelength or not. In this case, it is a film that is and is not a grotesque, is and is not a comedy. Such portrayal of society is truly not far from reality, which sometimes gives quite a chill.
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