"Mon Oncle"

This French thing....it's continuing! Guess I've been missing France. And trying to speak its language, a little.

The next film up is "Mon Oncle," from Jacques Tati, and it's his film that's probably more well-known than any other. I'd never seen any of his films until 2 1/2 years ago or so, when I saw "M. Hulot's Holiday" for the first time. Great, great stuff. "Mon Oncle" is the follow-up to "Holiday," and Tati once again plays his M. Hulot character. This one is fairly long as comedies go, almost two hours. And it needs the time, as most of its gags build up over time.

The plot, or what there is of it (most of Tati's stuff seems to center on vignettes within a framework), concerns the manager of a plastics plant named Arpel, who has a wife, son, and a very modern (for 1958) house. A lot of the humor has to do with his and his wife's fascination with all this new gadgetry they have, regardless if they really need it or not. Most times, it's "not." Their small son likes to spend as much time as possible with his uncle, who is M. Hulot. Hulot lives in a ramshackle place in town that has infinitely more character and charm than the Arpels' place. Come to think of it, the Arpels' place looks a little like the interior of a rocket ship from a fifties sci-fi cheapie.

One great repeated gag concerns a mostly hideous fish fountain that Mme. Arpel turns on whenever she thinks someone important has come over. Whenever she finds out it's "just" Hulot or a delivery guy, she switches it off. But my favorite gag of the whole movie doesn't have anything to do with the Arpels' house but centers on the son and his friends trying to get local folk to run into light poles. They'll place bets with each other and then right as the poor intended victim is about three feet from a light pole, one of the boys will whistle, intended victim's head will turn, and then there may or may not be a collision with the light pole. There's a small succession of these, and then a great return to the gag later in the movie. I loved it and laughed harder than at anything else in the film.

Terry Jones (of Monty Python) provides an introduction to the film on the disc I saw, and in the intro, he admits that he didn't think much of the movie when he first saw it....only to have it become his favorite on repeated viewings. I think it might be that way for me, too, although I did like it on this first watch. It does seem like there might be a lot I didn't get this first time. Tati's films are very dense, and this one was no exception.