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Film: On Tour
Year of production: 2010
UK Release date: 25th April 2011
Distributor: Artificial Eye
Certificate: 15
Running time: 111 mins
Director: Mathieu Amalric
Starring: Miranda Colclasure, Suzanne Ramsey, Dirty Martini, Julie Atlas Muz, Angela de Lorenzo
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Format: DVD
Country of Production: France
Language: French/English
Review by: Katy Stewart
Mathieu Amalric, best-known as an actor, has earned both critical acclaim and box office success (The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, The Quantum Of Solace). Adding directing and writing to his talents, On Tour is the quirky result of his collaboration with a troupe of New Burlesque performers.
Joachim (Amalric) is a failed Parisian TV producer who abandons his former life and takes off to America, where he meets a group of Burlesque dancers. Seeing a new opportunity, he brings them back to France and arranges for them to tour the country, introducing a French audience to their bold ‘New Burlesque’ routine.
The girls are supremely confident, cutting through language and cultural barriers in a flurry of feather boas and titillating performances. They are proud of their show – Mimi le Meaux (Miranda Colclasure) describes it as “Burlesque by women, for women” – and they refuse to let Joachim suggest changes.
He puts up with the girls’ wilful nature, the crummy hotels and the endless time on the road in the hope that a big show in Paris will bring him the success he deserves. However, when he is let down by a friend and unable to get a venue in Paris, his hopes begin to unravel. The girls continue to perform, undaunted, in ever-more provincial and dreary towns, but Joachim is often elsewhere as he tries to sort out his own messy personal life…
If there’s one thing this film lacks, it’s a definite plot. It is a pretty accurate representation of what one imagines life must be like on a low-budget tour, but noteworthy events are extremely sparse. Some critics have praised this realistic approach, but it does leave the viewer wondering when something is going to happen. Of course, the greatest storytellers are able to create powerful significance out of the most subtle moments and it seems that is what Amalric is trying to do here. But whether he is pleading with a hotel receptionist to turn off the awful piped music, confronting people from his past, or engaging in a moment of flirting with a gas-station attendant, we are never led to a greater underlying meaning. The viewer simply gets the sense that this man’s life is depressingly empty and meaningless, but it does not make for riveting viewing.
The film is given some life by the performances and by the fact that the girls are real-life burlesque dancers. They are unafraid to bear their voluptuous figures on stage or swear at Joachim in their gritty New York accents, meaning that they bring a delightful authenticity to the film. They are a breath of fresh air – colourful, energetic and bright against the grey backdrop of industrial France. This works very well for the actual performance sequences, but these are sadly fleeting. For the majority of the film, they are off-stage, kind of inverse caricatures of their on-stage personas. Nevertheless, they do provide optimism and positivity; delighting in the modest attractions of the towns they visit in the way only foreigners can.
Unfortunately, as the film progresses, more and more time is given over to Joachim’s parallel storyline, as he catches up with people he used to know and just as quickly moves on again, resolving nothing and revealing very little. Possibly in an attempt to make him a more sympathetic figure, his young sons come into the picture rather randomly and he drags them around on the tour for a bit before packing them back off to their mother. The effect, however, is to render all these encounters more or less pointless. The film may well be trying to present the futility of life, or some other similar philosophical sentiment, but it does not express it eloquently - and it does not keep the viewer interested. Amalric cuts a pitiful figure as the beleaguered producer, but not one that is easy to empathise with.
One aspect of the film that is admirable is the cinematography, which gives the a documentary-style feel, echoing the low-budget tour premise. The theme of incidental, fleeting moments, which does not work in the plot, is actually successful in the visual creation of the film. For example, we see many of the burlesque performances as if watching from the wings, making it even more teasing and tantalizing. Likewise, Amalric focuses upon personal, individual encounters even in regard to the relationship between the performers and the public, which is a much more effective way of showing the reaction of average working people to a risqué new show in town. In this sense, Amalric’s direction is assured and strong, it is just a shame this does not translate to the content.
This is a film which offers a quirky, dynamic cast and a creative take on the burlesque genre. However, it leaves the unsatisfactory feeling that this is a film which could have been so much more, if greater consideration had been given to the plot, or at least providing some point to the many insignificant moments. There is much to admire in individual scenes, but no strong thread holding them together. It almost feels like so much time was spent illustrating one man’s disappointing life and the unglamorous reality of life on tour that any sense of story was forgotten about.
On Tour promises a lot but does not completely deliver. It is worth watching for individually admirable performances and a pleasing lack of cliché, but don’t expect a gripping plot. KS
Film: The Diving Bell And The Butterfly
Release date: 9th June 2008
Certificate: 12
Running time: 112 mins
Director: Julian Schnabel
Starring: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Consigny, Patrick Chesnais
Genre: Biography/Drama
Studio: Pathe!
Format: DVD
Country: France/USA
The Diving Bell And The Butterfly is the true story of Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), who suffered a crippling stroke leaving him entirely paralysed except for the motor functions of his left eye. His mind, the butterfly, is trapped within the body, the diving bell - the film is giving a poetic voice to that butterfly, based on the book he wrote whilst in hospital without being able to physically write himself.
The film is a personal tale of the enduring human spirit in spite of devastating adversity, as it follows the inner monologue of Bauby coming to terms with his physical prison. He is a man who is helpless to speak or react to anyone, which proves extremely difficult for everyone he once knew, including his wife (Emmanuelle Seigner), children and mistress.
Bauby’s prison, however, slowly erodes as he learns to speak through the blinking of his left eye, which, utilising the help of the nurse (Marie-Joseé Croze), aids him to write the book that inspired the film. It is entirely gripping, humorous but also deeply emotive, as Bauby’s words that no-one can hear are screaming for a voice…
Despite the prison that Bauby is caged within, the film is as free as his mind, with metaphors and symbolism as explicit as the heartbreaking reality of his situation. Julian Schnabel did a superb and sensitive job in directing Mathieu Amalric, despite Amalric having to learn French for the film, and his eye being the only outlet for his visual talent. His onscreen presence shifts between the self important Elle editor to loving father, and finally to a passionate fragility, as the time frame shifts from past to present.
Visually, the film really excels. Schnabel claims the film is about different ways of seeing, and, by his own admission, used his own glasses over the lens to create the unique point of view of Bauby‘s. Latex was used to simulate the view of an eye being sewn up in a particularly memorable few minutes of the film, but it’s the moments of random eye movement that seemingly sum up the film’s personal feel. The audience is dragged through the iris of Bauby as he makes sense of his all too familiar surroundings again and again, as the film’s seductive focal points add up to a portrait of frustrating incarcerating disability.
Although Bauby is unable to communicate with others, the dialogue of others is as natural and as real as exchanges suited to reality. Some characters struggle to adjust their speech to their now paralysed friend, whilst others struggle talk at all – there is an extremely heart wrenching exchange between house-bound father and paralysed son.
Structurally, the timeline is succinct with Bauby’s own regrets with moments in his life - he cannot seem to let go, as the symbolic injection of Schnabel suggests. The symbolism of Bauby’s sinking body is contrasted by his free roaming imagination, which is packed with lust, love and vast emotional landscapes. The truth of the film really hits hardest at the end, as despite the fact that Amalric is acting; his delicate portrayal of Bauby only shows a glimmer of what a destructive force a stroke is on everyone involved.
It is, however, through the exploration of delicate relationships, with the seemingly lifeless, that strike the loudest chord. Bauby is witty and flirtatious for the audience only, but for the characters onscreen he is a shadow of his former self, despite, within his diving bell, finding a new meaning to life. The captivating and consistent caring nurse highlights that humanity is still within reach. She is hurt by his revelations of wanting to die. The writer (Anne Consigny) is a character that develops through her experience, as she has had no relations with Bauby prior and yet, is ultimately, the closest person to him, after aiding him write his book, who is just as moved as the audience by his poetic revelations.
Other moments highlight the tireless conflict - an awkward exchange between Bauby’s ex-wife and his mistress creates an unbearable tension which is then lifted by the heart-warming attempts of Bauby’s friend (Isaak De Bankole) to read to him. These moments make the film uplifting, yet also devastatingly poignant.
The Diving Bell And The Butterfly supplies that shred of real humanity that many films fail to attain as it explores the vast depths people will go for others. The over-bearing lows are met with the soul searching highs proving this film to be one of the most explorative in terms of disability, and especially of vast change that all people, no matter the circumstances, will experience. AE
Interview courtesy of Artificial Eye.
Mathieu Amalric began in working in movies as a props person before moving his way through the ranks as an assistant editor then first assistant with directors like Louis Malle, Romain Goupil, Alain Tanner, Joao Monteiro, before going on to act in films such as Arnaud Desplechin’s Rois Et Reine (which garnered him a Cesar and Lumiere award for Best Actor in 2005), as well as taking the director’s reigns himself, producing a number of shorts and acclaimed feature length movies including La Chose Publique.
Mathieu shows his talents both in front and behind the camera in the Cannes-recognised On Tour, which hits UK cinemas this week…
Where did the inspiration for On Tour come from?
To tell the truth, from Laetitia Gonzalez and yaël Fogiel, the producers, who, when the mixing of La Chose Publique wasn’t even finished (way back in 2002!), said to me: “Now then, what’s next?” So, totally empty but very touched by their interest, I left for several days with Marcelo Novais-Teles, a friend who I often like to kick ideas around with. And it was a text by Colette, The Other Side of Music-Hall, that I’d been carrying round with me for a long time, which came back to the surface. It consists of notes made during a tour, written for a newspaper, which published them as a serial, sublime sketches of her life as an actress, a somewhat scandalous pantomime (Colette was then aged between 33 and 39), lost in the provinces: “We run towards the hotel, to the stifling dressing room, and the blinding footlights. We run, impatient, chattering, clucking like poultry, towards the illusion of living fast, of being warm, of working, of barely thinking, of carrying within us neither regret, nor remorse, nor memories...”
We searched for contemporary equivalents; in striptease, in night-life, elsewhere, but nothing came - we couldn’t find this attraction for movement; Colette’s taste for provocation bursting with health, like a declaration of freedom by the body. Everything brought us back to stories of necessity - to prisoners.
Is that when you thought of the New burlesque girls?
In fact, it was thanks to an article in Libération which delivered a contagious account of their appearance one night at the Zèbre, a Parisian cabaret. Across a double-page, there were already photos of Dirty Martini, the most Fellini-esque, and Kitten On The Keys, the one who plays piano. And suddenly, we had the sensation that Colette was there, in this playful and torrid sensuality, this intimate and political affirmation of the potential beauty of everybody, regardless of age and however non-conformist they may be. The dangerous pleasure of performing; the timidity, the physical bravery, and the tantalizing fragility.
That was the start. But at this stage, based solely on scraps of paper and some photos, as if to allow the imagination to blossom. I mean, I didn’t want to meet them straight away in the flesh. I wanted to have a story first. And it was just then that the French independent producer Humbert Balsan committed suicide. This hit me hard with the realization of the possible end of our mortal selves. What do you do when a force of resistance like him disappears?
Those are two apparently unrelated events…
Of course, but it’s often the clash of two elements which gives rise to a story. Tenuous at first, but which obsesses you and feeds almost off itself, then on everything. Marcelo and I had always explored another avenue: my fascination for producers, their folly and their bravery. Where do they find the strength to continue?
And we made the link. The story of a man struggling against his melancholy. A former TV producer who makes a momentary comeback thanks to these girls who he wants to proudly display in his country, like boastful proof of his resurrection, of his return. Who wants to remain, in his unpleasant manner, a prince, whatever it costs him. But without a kingdom, and above all without power – apart, that is, from the pointless power of his liberty. A man with no home, who no longer knows if holding on means knowing when to leave the stage (which he’s done), or knowing when to stay in the spotlight (which his friends have done).
So where did you see a show for the first time?
In Nantes, at the Banana Hangar, thanks to Kitty Hartl, dance programmer at the Lieu Unique theatre who, in a certain way, is the model for Joachim. I met the girls with Philippe Di Folco, who came on board to finish co-writing the screenplay; he’s a writer and a man curious about everything - passionately erudite. Three intense days and nights to superimpose, with smiles on our faces, our intuitions onto the reality. After that, I went to see some festivals with 150 acts in three days, in San Francisco, New York, Naples, and so on. And I put together my own troupe, step by step over at least two years.
New burlesque gained wider acceptance through the media-savvy Dita Von Teese...
The actresses in On Tour are those who made possible the revival New burlesque. In the beginning, it was a lesbian movement, which started in 1995 with a group called the Velvet Hammer. These girls have politics in their bodies, a resistance to formatted physiques which requires no words. Nowadays, New burlesque has been somewhat appropriated into the canon
of Las Vegas with its more conformist bodies.
Mange Ta Soupe was a film about your family, Le Stade de Wimbledon showed the woman you loved. For the first time, you direct yourself in On Tour. Is this a step into self-portrait?
Goodness me, I don’t know - I haven’t really thought about it. I didn’t want to appear in On Tour. Everyone except me seemed to know I was going to end up doing it! It became a joke which didn’t make me laugh, because I was genuinely looking for someone. And then, yes, three weeks before the shoot, despite my misgivings, and protesting, it ended up being me.
Did the fact that you were acting in the film help you approach the directing differently?
Yes, it was quite practical, I must admit, and created an amusing complicity. I could orient the movement, generate surprises, and receive them. Within the frame, you realise when it’s the moment to make the drama come to the fore. During the scene on the train, for example, at the start of the film, I said to myself: “OK, you like Ophüls, and like in Le Plaisir, you’d like to see all these women sleepy and lascivious in a compartment. But that doesn’t make a scene!” So I picked up my phone and I started shouting. An actor senses if there’s something to get your teeth into, if there’s a scene to be acted out. And immediately, the girls and the gorgeous Roky were all playing along.
And then Christophe Beaucarne, the director of photography, and I were concerned with just one thing: striving so that the spectator goes with the characters, and doesn’t care who’s making the film. It was like an obsession which translated into some very specific questions about the directing: the right distance, discretion, warmth, fluidity of movement, and also live sound.
The issue of documentary and drama comes up repeatedly in On Tour...
All the time. The question came up from the writing stage, then during the preparation for production – which, incidentally, I find increasingly difficult to dissociate from directing. Deciding where you spend the money is already part of the directing process; that’s where the film is really defined, in fact. So you might as well get the project set-up right.
Then we had the intuition that to preserve the spontaneous energy that is vital for shows, we should set up a real tour. We thought the camera alone would not be enough for the girls, that they needed a packed hall. And we would sleep in the hotels where we’d film. From Le Havre to Rochefort, passing through Nantes, we put on a free show for anyone who signed a release form. We could never have afforded all those extras! We only had two-and-a-half hours to shoot each sequence, even those including the dialogues, but that created urgency, a precision which paradoxically bolstered the drama. Because the numbers were always watched, experienced by one of the characters, and the directing was built around that.
There were, of course, some extraordinary moments, so many that the first edit lasted 3 hours 15 mins. What followed, with editor Annette Dutertre, was a struggle between drama and documentary. And unsurprisingly – though with, at times, some terrible regrets – the drama, the characters became the central force.
The film shows places that we usually experience in passing, like hotel chains. Why did you want to film in these ‘neutral’ spaces in provincial France?
Colette spoke a lot about these places where you don’t see anything. That’s what you feel on tour: you’re somewhere, without really being there. And I found there was an amusing misunderstanding: Joachim is fantasizing about America, while the girls are fantasizing about France and Paris. But on tour they see almost nothing of it, or just that side of it.
There’s an unsettling scene at a highway gas station between Joachim and the woman at the cash desk…
It echoes Les passantes by Georges Brassens: just an exchange of glances, she who you could have loved... I like the idea of tours and circuses that go from town to town, the encounter between the residents and those who are just passing through. Very secret, unexpressed sentiments float around at toll booths and highways. And then there’s the incredible actress, Aurélia Petit. And all those uniforms, too: cashiers, air hostesses, hotel staff, social obligations, obligatory obedience...
However strange and empty they seem, the hotels in On Tour become the locus of gaiety and abandon. The film is really a comedy!
Comedy? That depends on the moment. Joachim is so up-tight. But sure, the New burlesque girls have a knack of transforming any place into a party. They never wallow in moaning. I love ham actors, people who like to make a table of people laugh, who go too far, but who we still need to have around. I’m always afraid they’ll sink into despair. With the girls in the troupe, it’s the same. There was no need for them to recount their past; their faces and bodies tell their own story. And yet, they can really transform a dull chain hotel into a place of desire.
Joachim feels that he is “surrounded by witches,” but who is he really?
Aha! We come back to the impenetrable mystery of the figure of the producer who, as the producer Jean-Pierre Rassam used to say, has the duty of shouldering irresponsibility, whatever the cost. And a producer is also an actor if he wants to survive, to charm, to terrify, to dream. Suddenly I’m thinking of Corneille’s Matamore: “When I want I terrify, and when I want I charm.” The cigar, the glitz, the schmaltzy costumes, they are all just decoys, tools of the trade, traps. Here, as a tribute to veteran producer Paulo Branco, I wore a moustache. What’s more, after making love, Mimi seems to think it’s a dressing-up costume. At that moment, Joachim is just a man who’s sleeping at last.
Is there an instruction manual for filming women between themselves?
I don’t really believe in male filmmakers who supposedly know what’s going on inside women’s heads. Rather, let’s just embrace the fact that cinema allows us to waken the adolescent boy in us who fantasizes about girls’ bedrooms.
A moment during the shoot comes back to me: on the balcony when Mimi is telling Dirty about her adventure in the bathroom. We shot several takes, they strolled about, Mimi’s character remaining a little shamefaced and taciturn, but warming up in contact with her friend; that was the planned scene. Fine. We’re about to change shot when an impulse comes to me: “Oh, Mimi, why don’t you tell Dirty what just happened?” Mimi recounts, in her own words, then Dirty reacts, acting (because, once again, as show girls, they’re always ‘dramatizing’). And there I am, behind the camera, headphones on, and thanks to their generosity and their playfulness, I entered the girls’ bedroom!
The mere fact of filming these women becomes an event. They have such charisma!
I admit that the narrative stunt of bringing these American girls to France saved me from a certain ordinariness, that’s for sure. Everything suddenly became interesting, fresh. We shared mutual fantasies, we exchanged our territories.
When you use the word territory, we come back again to this vision of a man amongst women...
Philippe and I would say: first of all, the power of the group. Joachim initially doesn’t look at them individually, then we move in on one. Chance or destiny, whichever you like, conspire for them to come together and something happens. Which in fact brings him back, soothed, within the group. It is the women together who ‘adopt’ him at the end. AE
Joachim, a former Parisian television producer had left everything behind – his children, friends, enemies, lovers and regrets - to start a new life in America. He comes back with a team of new burlesque strip-tease performers whom Joachim has fed fantasies of a tour of France, of Paris!
Travelling from port to port, the curvaceous showgirls invent an extravagant fantasy world of warmth and hedonism, despite the constant round of impersonal hotels with their endless elevator music and the lack of money. The show gets an enthusiastic response from men and women alike.
But their dream of a tour culminating in a last grand show in Paris goes up in smoke when Joachim is betrayed by an old friend, and loses the theatre where they were due to perform. A quick return journey to the capital violently reopens old wounds...
Film: On Tour
Release date: 10th December 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 111 mins
Director: Mathieu Amalric
Starring: Miranda Colclasure, Suzanne Ramsey, Linda Marraccini, Julie Ann Muz, Angela De Lorenzo
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Studio: Artificial Eye
Format: Cinema
Country: France
