preppy-3
Saw this at the Provincetown film festival. Wished I hadn't. Supposedly this was supposed to be a film about a burlesque shown written for women and performed by women. We get precious little of any of the acts though. It turns into a depressing and boring character study of the manager of the group--Joachim Zand (Mathieu Amalric). There isn't much of a story--it's just little episodes all scrambled together with little rhyme or reason. Joachim is an extremely annoying character--constantly chain smoking and letting people push him around because he's given up on life. Who wants to spend two hours watching someone like that? The actresses are all charming but given next to no screen time. If the movie had focused on them it might have worked. As it stands it's too slow and dreary.
luciok-601-210740
In my private opinion, it's one case that the trailer have ALL the good scenes of the movie. The impression is the original intention it was create sketches, improvising, in a "documentary" style, but it didn't work. My impression was the movie is a a bunch of situations that hardly interact with each other. Many times they do not make sense, looking like a desperate attempt to "avoid clichés", with unexpected reactions, but it didn't work, the result is not coherent.I love french movies, the subject - burlesque performers - is very interesting, but this one was very disappointing.(sorry for my English, is not my mother language)
writers_reign
It's perhaps fitting that in some respects this film resembles When The Sea Rises. Both were the work of fine actors who also appeared - Yoland Moreau and Mathiew Amlaric - and both centre on performers touring France although in the case of Moreau it was a one-woman show whilst Amlaric oversees a troupe of five ageing strippers. Both are fine films suffused with melancholy and would make for a fascinating double bill.Amlaric has a sure-footed approach to directing as he has shown in previous attempts and he contrives to capture a full spectrum of moods and emotions both from the troupe and himself as their seedy promoter manque. All in all a worthy effort and well worth seeing.
Framescourer
On Tour is a gloriously elusive film. Temperamentally it's as happy-go-lucky as the burlesque troupe, though a turbulent undercurrent of regret and self-doubt often blisters the surface.This emotional perpetual-motion is probably the most consistent element of the film. The titillation of the performances rely on the fleeting moment, glimpses offered then cut off. Similarly the camera-work is invariably in some sort of motion, often hand-held, looking from a large number of different perspectives. The frame of shot and depth of field focus also act to beckon the imagination where the eye cannot go. Other characters along the way are fickle too - a gas station attendant, or a just- married couple who cannot sustain a fixed grin in the way the troupe girls can.So it's a very adult film. The eddies of life's disappointments are the main tension of the film, its principal drama. Yet no-one tries to uncover another's source of disquiet. Everything is laid bare. A running joke is Joachim's irritance with piped music, the sonic junk that's designed to distract from the abyss (ironically, the one song escaping his censure, performed by one of the girls, is a typically introspective Radiohead song). There's no prying as to what's in that abyss, in the same way that there's no worthy-but-pointless digression concerning the size and shape of the women. Fury and tenderness blast out from unexpected moments but are then gone again with neither apology nor explanation. This is a true documentation of existential collateral: like the black dog with a lead in its mouth poised for a walk, occasionally barking for attention. I found it disarmingly real, charming, sexy, dry and without pity. 8/10
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