Tournée

Cannes (Official Selection) – And they're off! The first of this year's contenders for the Palme d'Or, Mathieu Amalric's Tournée, is out of the traps and onto the track. Paul Martin is watching from the stands.

It was another Golden Palm competitor that signaled an exponential rise in Mathieu Amalric's stock as an actor amongst English-speaking audiences. Though he was already well-known in his home country and had appeared in a small role in Spielberg's Munich, it was the Frenchman's portrayal of the stroke-afflicted Jean-Dominique Bauby in Julian Schnabel's 2007 Cannes entry The Diving Bell and the Butterfly that really made large numbers of UK and US movie-goers sit up and take notice of him. Subsequent to that triumph, Amalric the actor has followed in the footsteps of his Munich onscreen father Michael Lonsdale and joined the nefarious pantheon of Bond villains, and now we are presented with Tournée, Amalric the director's bid for a further slice of Cannes glory.

The Quantum of Solace star is aided in this enterprise by a number of arresting performers. Appearing alongside Amalric - who casts himself as chain-smoking would-be theatrical impresario Joachim Zand - are a sextet of Americans. Stars from the world of contemporary burlesque cabaret, they are five girls and a guy with colourful stage names like Kitten on the Keys, Dirty Martini, Roky Roulette and Mimi Le Meux. They are the leading attraction of Tournée ('On Tour'). Not so much in the sense of carrying the movie – the director graciously bills himself below them, yet his Joachim is unquestionably the central protagonist – more within the confines of the narrative, which finds them playing fictionalised versions of themselves; the talent on a theatrical tour of French port towns.

There is a temptation to wearily roll one's eyes at the mere mention of burlesque, conjuring up as it does images of women in basques and fishnet stockings straddling a stool while husking out some double entendre-loaded ditty. Or worse, the dreaded nipple tassels, twirling to the accompaniment of some honking brass. All about as genuinely sexy as a dog being sick inside its own mouth. However, even if there was nothing else positive to say about Tournée, a minor triumph would have to be recorded in recognition of the fact that the film will open the eyes of stereotyping know-nothings like myself to the wit and flair of modern burlesque performers such as the ones featured here. Though they do still make use of the old iconography, the showcased routines are sharp, knowing and oodles of fun. My personal favourite was Julie Atlas Muz engaged in a fight with a still-active severed hand clutched in her grasp.

And, as it happens, this convincing advocacy for the revived and remodeled burlesque is certainly not the sole positive quality of Tournée. Actor Amalric is terrific as Joachim, a one-time hotshot TV producer in Paris, a rising star in a brave new media world, who turned his back on that existence, donned velvet jacket and wingtip-collared shirt, grew one heck of a moustache, and put together this touring revue which he and his effervescently mischievous charges hope will take France by storm. Though the character possesses few redeeming qualities - being often rude and stubborn, not to mention a pretty lousy father to his two sons – there is still something roguishly loveable about Joachim, with this charm being attributable to Amalric's own star quality.

Director Amalric doesn't quite match his on-screen counterpart though, with his film often feeling slow and uneven. For example, the humour varies wildly in quality; from a sparkling scene when Joachim's eldest son is picked up by the police and the oft-absent father's shortcomings are laid bare in painfully funny fashion as he struggles, in the manner of a fish on the end of a hook, to answer the simple questions the attendant officer asks him about his boy. Far more tiresome is a running gag which sees Joachim constantly asking desk clerks to turn off the muzak playing in whatever hotel/bar/cafe in which they are working. In this case, Amalric and his co-writers seem to think repetition is the route to hilarity, when in practice it just fosters irritation.

Amalric's low key, unobtrusive shooting style, the patience with which he solicits the world views of his characters, and the deliberately open-ended nature of some of the film's scenarios - the unconsummated flirtation with Aurélia Petit's garage worker springs to mind – reminded me of Five Easy Pieces, and a more recent movie of similar style, Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler. Indeed, there are mutual thematic touchstones between the latter and Tournée; from the idea of everyday life struggling to match the thrill of performance in front of a crowd, to the parent estranged from their offspring.

But Amalric's apparent desire to reflect the random, fragmentary nature of real life leaves his film feeling frustratingly bitty and episodic. Sometimes it seems to want to be the tale of a father reconciling with his kids. Sometimes it appears to fancy itself as a middle-aged romantic comedy (as the touring life fails to fulfil either Joachim or Mimi, they are increasingly drawn together). What it ends up as is a slight, if sometimes enjoyable, viewing experience.

Rating on a scale of 5 Bond baddies: 2

Release date: TBC
Directed by: Mathieu Amalric
Written by: Mathieu Amalric, Philippe di Folcom Marcelo Novais Teles, Raphaëlle Valbrune
Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Miranda Coclasure, Linda Marraccini, Suzanne Ramsey
Rating: TBC
Running time: 111 minutes