Jacques Tati's 'Playtime', Ciné Lumière

Jacques Tati, that great French director of physical comedies, spent his early films developing his on-screen persona Monsieur Hulot: essentially the forefather of Mr. Bean, albeit more poignant and less screwball. For his fifth feature, he set his sights higher. Playtime (1967), which gets an extended run as part of the BFI’s Tati retrospective, is a full-blown satire of bourgeois modern life that sends up everything from brutalist architecture to fussy restaurant waiters.
Hulot features, but he – and plot – play second fiddle to the awesomely intricate steel-and-glass set, the construction of which famously bankrupt Tati. This monstrous parody of a modern urban development serves as the backdrop to two and a half hours of gentle satire and marvellous visual gags. François Truffaut wrote that Playtime was “a film that comes from another planet”; it ranked 43rd in a recent BFI poll of the greatest movies of all time. Audiences didn’t agree, and it flopped at the box office on its release. It’s high time for a reappraisal.
A screening of Playtime at the Ciné Lumière on October 20 will be followed by a Q&A with Jérôme Deschamps, President of Les Films de mon oncle, who was involved in the film’s restoration.