Trafic

In his last on-screen appearance, Jacques Tati’s beloved alter ego Monsieur Hulot is a car designer trying desperately to get his latest model from the workshop in Paris to a car show in Amsterdam. Mechanical failure and obstinate customs agents await, but the greatest challenge is the gridlock that seems to cover half of Europe. In Trafic, the feeling of loneliness and escape generally associated with the road movie is replaced by the cacophonous collective experience of the traffic jam, which Tati breaks down into the comedic patterns, isolated sounds, and technological quirks that make him such an essential witness to modernity. Serge Daney wrote: “Who today is able to pick up and imitate the most quotidian gestures (a waiter serving a beverage, a cop moving traffic), and at the same time incorporate these gestures in a construction as abstract as a Mondrian canvas? Tati, obviously, the last of the theorist-mimes.”