After seeing Playtime (1967), François Truffaut wrote to Jacques Tati, “This is the first film about the Europe of 1968, but directed by a Martian.” Tati was a visionary who, in his main works, gently but precisely critiqued the frustrations of modern life. However, Playtime was too big a production and a commercial risk that proved financially disastrous for the director.
Jean-Baptiste Péretié, who previously directed a documentary about Buster Keaton – another of Jacques Tati’s idols – now paints a portrait of the cherished French filmmaker. The film presents Tati’s early years and even a little of his private life, but as Tati lived for his films, it rightly focuses on the uncompromising dedication of the filmmaker.
Archive materials reveal the astonishing scale of Playtime’s production. To create his ultramodern suburb, the director built ‘Tativille’, a film set town, complete with sewer, that could have housed 15,000 people. Péretié’s film is a tribute to Tati’s overall vision. At the same time, a subtle contradiction arises between the austerity of the clumsy street characters portrayed by Tati (the comical mailman and Monsieur Hulot) and the grandiosity and perfectionism of director Tati. He may well have dropped down here from the moon, but Jacques Tati certainly left nothing to chance.
Tytti Rantanen