My Uncle - 9/11, Film Forum

My Uncle begins and ends with a pack of dogs, playing in the charming dilapidation and waste of the old alleys of Paris. One of them, clad incongruously in plaid, is permitted to enter a garish gated modern home in the suburbs where he is cleaned and fed by his owners, the nuclear family Arpel. The dynamic between worlds is immediately set up, and the going between the two so successfully managed by the dog is what this film is all about.

The version I saw at Film Forum is a newly-restored English language version shot simultaneously with the same cast as the classic Mon Oncle, and was preceded by a bad short made up of clips from M. Hulot's Holiday juxtaposed with ugly super-8 footage of beaches over a cheesy soundtrack.

Having never seen Mon Oncle, I can't report on the differences, but I guess they're mostly minor; the film is extremely light on the dialogue, emphasizing the physical action that is its focus. Some of the scenes were clearly shot with the actors speaking English, but they're still dubbed, and always very poorly- occasionally so poorly it's difficult to understand. Some of the dialogue is still in French, but a keen eye and a knowledge of the language are not necessary to see that they don't sinc either. Sound seems to have been added entirely in post-production, and while the numerous effects and noises are superb, the dialogue is very shoddy.

Writer/director Jacques Tati plays Hulot, committed to a carefree lifestyle in charming old-fashioned Paris, strolling distinctively around the produce vendors and cafes that make up his world. We get quite a look at this world, and it's very much a social one. These scenes are all about characters communicating with each other, and whether it's in French or hard-to-get English really doesn't matter because their gestures are what we focus on-- what's important is not what's said but how these people say it, or even just the fact that they have so much to say at all and that they're saying it to each other. 

This is the most striking of the many contrasts between the living city and the mechanized suburb, the visual ones being of course more obvious: jagged vs. straight, smooth vs. textured, vibrantly messy vs. painfully ordered. The dialogue between the members of this other class is stilted, brief, and extremely awkward, but everyone continues to play their part except for the Arepl's little boy Jimmy. Hulot happens to be Jimmy's uncle, and when he picks him up from school Jimmy gets a chance to immerse himself in the flesh-and-blood world outside his walls.

The Arepl's absurd house is comedic by itself, but most of the movie's gags result from Hulot's entrance into the environment. Irritated and unaccustomed, he wages a slapstick war with modernity. The soundtrack swells with constant electric hum and white noise as well as more jarring industrial sounds; characters awkwardly find themselves in stasis, clearly uncomfortable but apparently with no alternative; the bizarre technology and hyper-modern decor are so exaggerated as to be totally surreal: it's no surprise this film is cited as a major influence by David Lynch.

Besides the presence of both French and English languages, there are a variety of accents within the English dialogue. Many minor characters have strong French accents, and there seems to be a distinction made between English and American. The names of the family are Anglicized (even Americanized, as for instance Jimmy, whose name in the French version is Gérard), whereas others are not (the French-speaking maid and Hulot himself). From these details we realize that the Arpels are an American family living in France. Thus in this version more is contrasted than class or era lifestyles: Jimmy's excursion becomes a bored American child joyfully engaging with French culture, and Hulot's intrusion the disturbance of hearty French living upon soulless American industrialism. The attack on the American consumerist lifestyle that was only implied in the French version becomes concrete as the targets of ridicule go from Hollywood-influenced French people to actual Americans. The fact that this version is the one which was prepared specifically for an American audience may say something about Tati as an artist- a last joke from M. Hulot.