Watch On Tour For Free

Please don't spend money on this.

Just what I expected

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

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.

To many, Mathieu Amalric was the bad guy in Quantum of Solace (Marc Forster, 2008), but most familiar with his name will recall his outstanding portrayal of Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel, 2007). Small parts in Munich (Steven Spielberg, 2005) and Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola, 2006) support the idea that Amalric's bound to have made it – to some extent – in Hollywood by now. This may be the source of the trashy and (at times) visceral swipes at the American culture, that fuel much of his first internationally distributed feature On Tour.Joachim (Amalric) invites a group of burlesque dancers are over from the States to tour with him around his homeland, whereby they are promised an almighty, star-spangled crescendo in Paris. These women are all shapes and sizes: 'real women' we're often told to imagine in the media backlash against stick-thin-supermodels. The performances within certainly feel real. Amalric's camera seems to be a claustrophobic one, that never shys away from the lines and creases of these performers (perhaps an idea carried over from his Diving Bell... role). And yet he knows when to back off and let the audience take their place amongst the paying spectators in his fictional theatre. At best, the viewer is awestruck at the harmonisation of vulgarity of spectacle and beauty (epitomised in Julie Atlas Muz's 'moonhead' dance).Fellini comparisons are understandable: the film is rife with references to La Strada (1954), La Dolce Vita (1960), and most notably 8 ½ (1963). We meander from one place to another, meeting past and future conquests, and picking up plot lines along the way. They're never just dropped though, and the intensity and style Amalric offers strikingly well in acting is carried through into his filmmaking. What at first seem like transparent, garish, has-been beauties, do in fact transform into characters worthy of understanding, to the extent that Mimi le Meaux (Miranda Colclasure) becomes as much the protagonist as Amalric by half-way. This owes much to the documentary style of the film, whereby the viewer is omniscient throughout. We're there for the warm-up, the laziness, the meals, the performance, the disappointing cubicle sex. The omniscient spectator is granted access to everything. Make of it what we will. Amalric directs and stars, and his acting is thoroughly melodramatic too, as he battles to be part of the limelight we find out he's recently lost due to his tearaway instincts – in this way he very much resembles the Mastroianni of Fellini. But these women who want the limelight ("this is our show" he's constantly reminded) disrupt the chances of him ever running the show. Amalric, in a very roundabout way – like Boyle in 127 Hours (2010) - seems to be highlighting the impossibility of going it alone.The film is a mess. But an entertaining mess. In context, it wouldn't make sense any other way.

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

I loved this film. This glorious film is moving and hilarious by turns as it narrates the misadventures of a troop of five aging American burlesque dancers(they are actual strippers all making their motion picture debut) and their acerbic manager (Amalric in perhaps the performance of his career) as they tour France with their risqué show.The dialogue which includes English spoken around the 5 American performers and French for the rest of the characters is realistic and witty. The screenplay is very loose and allows for lots of digressing interludes which are endearing. There are many burlesque acts shown in full in the movie and they are very entertaining.The movie is bawdy with the dancers often behaving in a loud crass way and of course there's plenty of nudity, on stage and off stage, but the entire film and its performances are just so genial and ingratiating that you can't help but have a good time at the cinemas.ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.