David O'ConnellON TOUR @ The French Film Festival
March 2nd 2011 04:14
Mathieu Amalric earned himself the best director’s prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and with good reason. Best known for his work in front of the camera, especially in Julian Schnabel’s remarkable The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), Amalric also assumes the lead in this strangely hypnotic road trip about a dubious manager and his troupe of American burlesque performers, brought to France after a recent venture abroad.
As On Tour (Tournee) (2010) progresses it becomes clearer that Joachim Zand (Amalric) may have fled to escape debtors in Paris as well as the fallout from his nefarious, underhanded dealings with business associates. His return to his homeland is a bittersweet one; his two young sons are close by again but so are a swath of enemies. Even his performers are linked to him out of minimal necessity: he’s informed in no uncertain terms of their autonomy, that the production is “their show”. Joachim is merely prodding them along the tracks, making deals for upcoming performances in out of the way harbour towns. Ultimately they’re on the road to Paris, but Joachim’s unreliability casts doubt on whether they’ll ever make it there.
That is all beside the point anyway, for this insightful, magnificently understated film is really about Joachim and one of his stars, Mimi Le Meaux (Miranda Colclasure). Like her fellow performers, Mimi is the antithesis of the body type worshipped in the unintentionally hilarious recent American C-grader, Burlesque (2010), which tried to camouflage its risible dialogue in pyrotechnics and outlandish musical excess. Mimi's body is a thing of imperfect beauty - all paunch, blemishes and saggy bits savoured as part of what is a modest but dazzling show, crammed with risqué elements and crowd-pleasing thrills aplenty.
Amalric excels as both director and star
The unforced camaraderie between these non-actors is endearing, even in off-the-cuff moments that feel organically created through improvisation. Colclasure’s performance is far from startling but the dignity of her character is explicitly felt, whilst Amalric proves that the burden of helming the film has had little impact on his own performance.
Joachim is basically an unsympathetic loser, yet an array of smaller moments afforded him feel more defining than the overwhelming evidence of his deceitfulness. Initially he seems likely to be absorbed into the background but as he separates from the group with ulterior motives, details of his inner life begin to catch the light. His chain-smoking, his irritability at background music in hotels, and a need to palm free mints whenever they appear in front of him come close to endearing him as well.
Another of On Tour’s great assets is its languorous rhythm which establishes a meandering but compelling reality. Devoid of any generic cinematic traits, the film might sound thin in the re-telling, but there’s something captivating in Amalric’s approach. An authenticity is created through a mixture of elusive properties, making its success difficult to pinpoint. A tinge of pathos proves to be a great enabler, but in general the film is remarkably restrained in every way. I guess I’ll just have to chalk down its effect on some indefinable magic. On Tour is very highly recommended and sure to be one of the standouts of this year’s festival.
The 2011 French Film Festival begins next week, kicking off in Sydney and Melbourne before progressing to other states.
Miranda Colclasure as Mimi Le Meaux
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