Yoyo

The films of Pierre Etaix are pretty much unknown today, having been tied up in a legal dispute for decades. It was finally resolved in 2007, and they've been restored and reintroduced within the last few years (Criterion's nice box set was released in 2013). Yoyo is perhaps the best regarded of them. It is a fine French comedy. Somewhat reminiscent of Tati, but it has its own charms. Etaix stars. At first he plays a lonely rich man in 1925 (it opens as a silent film), who uses his extravagant wealth to distract himself from missing his true love (Claudine Auger), a circus performer. She returns with his clown son, Yoyo, in tow. After the stock market crash, Etaix joins his girl and their son in the circus act. The film soon skips ahead to WWII, where Yoyo, now an adult clown (also played by Etaix) entertains troops and hopes for better times. The plot on this one is very loose, and the comedy's not always laugh-out-loud funny, but it is very amusing and entertaining throughout. It's also quite lovely at times. It seems that this Etaix person is an actual discovery.

Growing up in France, I always heard of Jacques Tati and Pierre Etaix in the same breath: critical successes, commercial failures. This is the first time I am actually seeing an Etaix movie (via the Criterion's DVD). and I see the charm, but I also see the limitations of Etaix's art, unfortunately. While Jacques Tati's "Playtime" is a timeless masterpiece ( I have seen Playtime 3 or 4 times now, big screen or small screen, and I never get tired of it) Pierre Etaix' s "Yoyo" has its charming moments and delightful camera angles, but in the end, it comes out as a collection of gags (some enchanting, some dated) with no coherence behind them. No developed storyline. "Yoyo" starts in a virtuoso way (fabulous fake silent movie!), but peters out quickly script wise, and by the end, elicits only a "meh?". I stopped watching the second movie ("As long as you got your health") after 2 "sketches": no plot, bad timing, irritating musical choices. I am so very sorry, Mr Etaix.

I remember in 1965 seeing a clip of this movie on TV the week it came out. It featured a rich woman being driven slowly round the square by her chauffeur and 'walking' her dog by sitting in the back of the limousine with her dog on a lead to the pavement. That quirky and humorous image stuck in my impressionable young head and I promised myself I would go and see it when it came to the local cinema. Needless to say, it never did and it has never been on TV or DVD that I'm aware of.

I'm still waiting...

This is so often the case in the UK. I am a huge fan of Japanese cinema but most of the movies reviewed highly on sites like Midnight Eye never get over here. Are subtitles so unbearable to UK moviegoers? We lap up some of the tripe from Hollywood but anything where English is not the main language really struggles. One thing is for sure, most of the challenging and original stuff is not coming from Los Angeles.

squeaky shoes, drawers, carts, etc. much like "The Artist" minimal dialog

Pierre Étaix co-directed one of Jacques Tati's great hits, "Mon Oncle" and I noticed that many folks think his style is very close to Tati's--which it is. However, and this is very important, if you don't like Tati's film, you'll probably not be particularly fond of "Yoyo". The film looks a bit like the recent film "The Artist" combined with Tati as well as Chaplin. Many love this, it's true. I didn't. I just felt that the pacing was extremely slow and the film lacked energy and fun.

The film begins with a bored, rich guy (Pierre Étaix) in a huge house. He seems to have no interest in anything and eventually you learn it's because he's lost his love--a woman who ran off to be in the circus. This portion of the film is very much like a silent film--with very little dialog and VERY over-exaggerated sound effects. I thought it rather annoying when you hear almost explosively loud squeaking shoes and sliding drawers. It was supposed to be funny...it wasn't.

When the stock market crashes in 1929, the bored rich guy sells off the contents of his house and goes in search of this lady love. They meet and tour the country entertaining--along with her son (the rich guy now realizes he has a kid), Yoyo. Yoyo is a small and very talented clown and when he grows, he is ALSO played by Étaix. He moves back into the empty mansion and restores it to its old glory--but eventually it turns out he's pretty bored and the home is emotionally empty.

If you like mimes and Jacques Tati, then by all means watch this film. Otherwise, for me, it just wasn't particularly interesting. While it had some very nice sight gags, I just didn't care one bit about the characters--a serious flaw.

While Tati seemed to love performers this film abuses them, its seriously unfunny. The actors are fine but they are treated shoddily. The film maker seems to want to denigrate live performers. It's inventiveness is not enough salvage it's integrity.. Check out any Tati movie and compare the framing the narrative and the characterization to appreciate how trite this film is by comparison. Oddly it was made AFTER Tati's heyday. One would hope something had been learned. French satire by its very nature is somewhat lame, but this is embarrassing. It's as though Germany had won in 1871 and infected European story telling.