Jour de fête

An inept French postman tries to get his round delivered but keeps getting distracted by various events on the day of the village fete.

To my shame I’ve never seen a Tati film all the way through, and I’d always had him down as a French cross between Keaton and Chaplin. This is true and it is not a bad thing.

However, it’s not the whole truth. I was not expecting such a colourful and rich tapestry of slightly backward French rural life. As the postman goes about his business crashing into the set and losing his bike, life goes on around him. There are hundreds of little things going off at the same time and loads of little cutaway half-jokes.

We’ll be watching more Tati as we carry on our voyage through comedy history, and after this I’m looking forward to what comes next.