Mon Oncle (1958)

Jacques Tati.

‘Not unlike that awful trail at IKEA…’

And now for something entirely different. Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle (1958)- a satire on bourgeois aspiration and the perils of modern life. It’s wry, it’s super-stylish; it’s incredibly French, it has Gallic whimsy. If you’ve never seen a Tati film before, Mon Oncle is a great place to start- this was his first film in colour. Tati’s character, Monsier Hulot, is the shabby uncle in a crumpled mac, pipe, hat and umbrella; a bit like Chaplin- an actor and director much admired in France, the land of mime and Marcel Marceau. I appreciate that this may not be everybody’s cup of tea, the stylised, almost slapstick stuff- but in Tati’s films it works beautifully, in a subtle post-war way.

‘So geometric as to have lost any human or inhabitable character…’