Review on Playtime movie by Jacques Tati

 

Jacques Tati's film Playtime is about an American tourist's journey to Paris on a European tour, and it's interesting to people involved in architecture and design in one way or another. The director shows not the classical architecture of Paris but faceless buildings of glass, metal and concrete, but in the glass we can see reflections of the Eiffel Tower and other iconic buildings and structures of Paris and the Parisian sky. He is ironic about the consumer society and these identical airports, exhibition centres and business centres which can be found in every metropolis where individuality is lost, but at the same time it is clear that this architecture appeals to him. The overall impression is also supported by the colours palette used - monochrome greys, blues, browns and blacks, suggesting uniformity, a lack of individuality and soul.

Almost an entire city was built for the film, designed to be an image of 'modern' Paris. The city was nicknamed Tativille, and was in part a parody of the Défense district under construction, although Tati himself said that he chose only the best examples of architecture of the time. Stylistically it is a celebration of functionalism, the 'international style', twin buildings, prisms of different proportions; in fact it is a giant mock-up wall, dotted along the streets of Taviville. Tati translates the conversation about the city from the language of imitation forms and styles to the language of the senses. Colour, sound, touch, smell - with their help Tati constructs the pervasive environment of the "ultra-modern" city. At first glance it is a perfectly sterile space in which the dominant colours are gray, steel. So much so that at certain moments the film could even be mistaken for black and white. Glass, metal, synthetics, plastic surround the characters everywhere: in an airport, in an office building, at a household appliance and furniture show, in an apartment building, in a trendy café. All the actors within this environment seem to revel in this trendiness and sterility to no end - or so they pretend. But a closer look makes it clear: this fashionable city is not so simple, it is full of traps, games and absurd situations. Glass is the perfect material for jokes: the characters don't understand where to run in the reflected space, they don't notice the glass door and smash it with their foreheads. The roar of cars, the clatter of heels, the clang of lifts, the slamming of doors, the crackle of neon constantly drown out the conversations of the characters (who, moreover, often find themselves behind glass, like in an aquarium). This city, in the name of pleasure and comfort, constructs a labyrinth in which people's real relationships with themselves and others are dissolved in this noise, light and glass - just like real landmarks: the Arc de Triomphe flashes through the opening door, the Eiffel Tower is barely visible on the horizon, fleeting meetings do not turn into romances, and old friends are carried away by a river of cars.