Tournée

Saw this at the Provincetown film festival. Wished I hadn't. Supposedly this was supposed to be a film about a burlesque shown written for women and performed by women. We get precious little of any of the acts though. It turns into a depressing and boring character study of the manager of the group--Joachim Zand (Mathieu Amalric). There isn't much of a story--it's just little episodes all scrambled together with little rhyme or reason. Joachim is an extremely annoying character--constantly chain smoking and letting people push him around because he's given up on life. Who wants to spend two hours watching someone like that? The actresses are all charming but given next to no screen time. If the movie had focused on them it might have worked. As it stands it's too slow and dreary.

Sustained by a steady direction and a camera that moves confidently to capture every single, significant twinkle, the result is a dry, harsh movie, always carefully focused. The environment is that of squalid burlesque shows, with ageing and decadent women, selling old-fashioned and sad shows, in anonymous theatres of anonymous French towns. Their daily routine is sad, the contrast between the excess of their shows and the nothingness of their real lives sounds depressing. They are taken on tour around an absent France by Joachim, a former TV producer, who abandoned by everyone, now makes a living by finding a suitable theatre for their performances, in a way using them in order to come back to Paris as the successful man he'll never be. All these women feel alive only when on stage, where they can play the game of seduction and forget the sadness looming over their lives, with no family, no relationships, no roots. Joachim's character is a living failure, to the point that those women become his only family, more than his own children. A decadent and depressing humanity, depicted with mercilessness but also inspiring compassion. The cast, made up of real new burlesque performers, proves indeed authentic and capable of conveying pathos. In particular Mathieu Amalric as Joachim delivers a strong and emotionally involving performance, which goes hand in hand with his skillful direction.

In my private opinion, it's one case that the trailer have ALL the good scenes of the movie. The impression is the original intention it was create sketches, improvising, in a "documentary" style, but it didn't work. My impression was the movie is a a bunch of situations that hardly interact with each other. Many times they do not make sense, looking like a desperate attempt to "avoid clichés", with unexpected reactions, but it didn't work, the result is not coherent.

I love french movies, the subject - burlesque performers - is very interesting, but this one was very disappointing.

(sorry for my English, is not my mother language)

I loved this film. This glorious film is moving and hilarious by turns as it narrates the misadventures of a troop of five aging American burlesque dancers(they are actual strippers all making their motion picture debut) and their acerbic manager (Amalric in perhaps the performance of his career) as they tour France with their risqué show.

The dialogue which includes English spoken around the 5 American performers and French for the rest of the characters is realistic and witty. The screenplay is very loose and allows for lots of digressing interludes which are endearing. There are many burlesque acts shown in full in the movie and they are very entertaining.

The movie is bawdy with the dancers often behaving in a loud crass way and of course there's plenty of nudity, on stage and off stage, but the entire film and its performances are just so genial and ingratiating that you can't help but have a good time at the cinemas.

ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

A great movie that shows true feelings of very special people in their life where you can see in great close-ups that they have lived quite a lot. A mix between inter cultural differences (american/french) and show time entertainment. Fun girls in a hard life and a great male protagonist who fights his career- and family-disaster and who is impossible to read. The view from behind the curtain towards the audience shows you the view of the smiling actors behind the scene. Clever running gags and emotional characterizing of the people and cultures in focus gave me something to think about before going to sleep. Loved it for being perfectly different!