Jacques Tati - Mon oncle aka My Uncle (1958)

Five years after his first appearance, Jacques Tati's M. Hulot returns with Mon Oncle, a film set along the dividing line between Paris' past and its future. Aligned (as is the film) with the former, Hulot lives in a colorful, overpopulated Parisian neighborhood and, lacking employment, spends his days waiting to pick up his adoring nephew from school, and subsequently escorting him to his parents' ultra-modern house. Filled with gadgets, some turned on only to impress the neighbors, the house seems designed specifically to frustrate Hulot, who unwittingly disrupts its operations at every opportunity. Concerned about his future, Hulot's relatives attempt to find him gainful employment and pair him off with a neighbor, with little success on either front. The nearly dialogue-free film is less concerned with the family's attempts as they relate to an overall plot, and more interested in how they play into its overall scheme of contrasts and allow for Tati's unmistakable sight-and-sound gag set pieces.





Like Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton, France's great comic satirist Jacques Tati plays the role of the bumbling innocent. Tati's irreverent, serio-comic Monsieur Hulot films pit the hero's naive charm against the vagaries of the modern world; nowhere is this theme more overt than in the director's first color film, Mon Oncle. Convoluted technological advances turn up in the most unassuming places, and poor Hulot is typically the brunt of the action. Like Chaplin and Keaton before him, Tati uses the character's inherent mildness and some wonderfully choreographed slapstick comedy to underscore his commentary on humanity versus the changes of modern life. Mon Oncle was widely acclaimed, winning the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar as well as a Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Perfectionist Tati would wait almost a decade before his next feature, the extraordinary Playtime (1967). (Brendon Hanley)







Mi tío
Hulot, un personaje amable y extravagante, vive en un ático de una laberíntica casa vecinal en un viejo y modesto barrio parisino. De vez en cuando visita a su hermana, casada con un rico fabricante de tubos de plástico. Los Arpel, nuevos ricos, viven en una mansión ultramoderna provista de los últimos avances en electrodomésticos. Gérard, el hijo único de nueve años, adora a este pariente lleno de fantasía con el que puede compartir juegos y travesuras. Sin embargo, monsieur Arpel considera que su cuñado no da buen ejemplo al niño y decide alejarlo de Gérard. Para ello, le consigue un puesto de trabajo en su empresa. Mientras, Mme. Arpel trama una garden party para que su hermano conozca a una sofisticada vecina soltera. Sin embargo, Hulot, incapaz de desempeñar un trabajo estable y de someterse al rígido protocolo practicado por su amante hermana, siembra el desconcierto en la fábrica y en el sofisticado jardín de los Apel, presidido por un pez espada recepcionista que gorgojea agua de color púrpura... (filasiete.com)





Monsieur Hulot est l’oncle de Gérard Arpel, un gamin qui vit avec ses parents dans une villa moderne, luxueuse et froide. À ce décor ennuyeux, le petit Gérard préfère l’univers de son oncle : un vieux quartier où il peut jouer avec d’autres enfants sur un terrain vague. Mais les parents de Gérard, et notamment son père, industriel, voudraient bien que Monsieur Hulot mène enfin une existence sérieuse, laborieuse et... ennuyeuse. C’est heureusement sans espoir : à l’usine Plastoc, où il est engagé, Monsieur Hulot s’endort, et provoque des catastrophes...





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