# Vacances de M. Hulot, Les (1953)

### reviewed by
Kevin Patterson

    Les Vacances de M. Hulot
    Rating: **** (out of four)
    NR, 1953
    Directed, written by, and starring Jacques Tati.

Jacques Tati's 1953 classic "Les Vacances de M. Hulot" (also known as "Mr. Hulot's Vacation," in English) ought to be the textbook on how to do non–dialogue comedy in film. The characters hardly ever speak to each other directly, and the film operates on the paper–thin premise that Monsieur Hulot, played by Tati himself, is awkward and clumsy and generally manages to annoy the other guests at the beach resort hotel where he is taking a week's vacation. Yet the film had me beside myself laughing more consistently than any in recent memory.

Part of the reason the film works so well is the clever setup for the various gags. Slapstick has often been regarded as an unsophisticated and even crude form of comedy, but I think part of the reason for this is that it often seems forced: you can only see movie characters start running after something and then crash face-first into a pole so many times before you start to wonder what all these poles are doing there in the first place or why these people don't watch where they're going. In "Les Vacances de M. Hulot," the gags build upon each other and often start out relatively low-key. In one sequence, for example, Hulot is painting the side of his small row boat on the beach when, while his back is turned, the paint can gets caught up in the oncoming waves, washes away, then comes back up on the other side of the boat. While crossing over to get the can, Hulot steps in the boat and unknowingly cracks it. When he actually takes the boat out into the water, it breaks in half, but the two halves flip up against each other, trapping him inside as the bystanders mistake it for a shark fin and panic on the beach ensues. Tati doesn't waste a single opportunity for humor; scenes that might have yielded one joke in most comedies are good for at least four or five in this film.

It has been said that comedy relies on frustrating the audience's expectations, and "Les Vacances de M. Hulot" succeeds brilliantly in that area as well. Tati accomplishes this largely through a sort of deadpan understatement. When Hulot goes into a separate room during dinner and starts playing a record at defeaningly loud volume, no fights or shouting matches ensue; instead, the waiter calmly walks in and shuts off the power in the room, disconnecting the record player and leaving a puzzled Hulot sitting in the dark. Tati also uses running gags to this effect, allowing them to keep running far longer than most comedy directors would; more often than not, we can see them coming and think, "Oh, he's not going to do that again," but, lo and behold, he does. For example, there is a recurring joke in which Hulot's noisy, sputtering car engine wakes everyone in the middle of the night as an exterior shot reveals the hotel's lights coming on one by one. Then this image turns up again in the finale, which I will not give away other than to say that involves a lot more noise in the middle of the night than a car engine could ever produce.

The ending is one of two elements that really make this a four-star film as opposed to merely an above-average, clever comedy. As much as I was laughing during this film, I was thinking to myself occasionally that Tati had to top himself at the end to really make this work as a complete viewing experience; suffice it to say that he did. The other important aspect is that the film never seems disdainful of its characters. It easily could have turned the tables on Hulot and had the other guests exact some kind of revenge on him; alternatively, it could have portrayed the others as humorless curmudgeons. Instead, Tati seems to regard his characters with cheerful amusement more than anything else and invites the audience to like them, however strange or irritating they might seem.

"Les Vacances de M. Hulot" is not subtitled, but the dialogue is sparse and for the most part not terribly essential to the flow of events. Anyone with a taste for this kind of absurd humor ought to make this film their next rental from the video store.

NOTE: "Les Vacances de M. Hulot" was not rated by the MPAA. It would at most receive a PG rating.

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