Review of Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1953) by Emanuel D — 21 Sep 2007

With the passage of time all genres have to go down extreme routes. Horror films will need to be bloodier and gorier. Was there really a time when Bela Lugosi was scary to anyone except his wife? What would he make of Saw or Hostel? Comedy is no exception.

As I watched M. Hulot negotiating his way around the hotel lobby, I wondered what heâ??d think of Ben Stillerâ??s balls stuck in his zipper and Cameron Diazâ??s hair standing on end with her inexpensive hair gel.

Your sides will not hurt and you will not fight the urge of looking away when youâ??re watching M. Hulot. A gag will make you smile but it is not screwed in to a cringing, interminable and painfully predictable end.

Though you can experience the inspiration of many comedians â?? prominently Rowan Atkinsonâ??s Mr Bean â?? Hulot is mild, well-meaning and â?? here is the humour â?? oblivious of his luck, good or bad.

Like all of Tatiâ??s films of M. Hulot, there is close to no dialogue, very little character development, not much of a story line, practically no close up to understand the facial expressions of the characters, and barely any plot arc. And yet the film seems to share with us an experience of a time lost to us and that we all wish back.

Beach side resorts like the one on the Atlantic coast M. Hulot goes to for his holidays barely exist anymore. For starters few people have the time, the money and the inclination, to spend a stretch of some six weeks in a water front hotel. Water front hotels today tend to be gigantic sprawls of landscaped artificiality with an unbearable and un-winnable competition for deck-chairs and break-neck indulgencies euphemistically called water sports.

The little hotel, the little post office and the little lay-by restaurant have given way to the standard beach town experience that is as accelerated and stressful in its own way as the city during the rest of the year.

It would seem that summer holidays have gone down the way of horror films and comedies: the â??adventureâ?? has to be more extreme. Knocking a ball around in the sun waiting for the set menu to be served is no longer enough. Now we need to go abseiling or sky diving, comb the town for Thai and Brazilian food, dance all night, all crammed in four days which leave us more tired at the end of our holiday than before it starts.

Perhaps those relaxed holidays we hear our parents describe were still contemporary for M. Hulotâ??s time. For the original viewers of this film there would not have been that longing for a time without laptops and wireless Internet, SMSes and continuous streams of emails on four mail accounts.

In this pre-Facebook world youâ??d recognise from the previous year the elderly man who spends the summer quietly following his elderly wife in their aimless rambles around town; the English woman who spent all her summers in France and never learnt to say Bonjour properly; the retired Major from the Great War who has not realised the war is over; the busy businessman who hogs the only phone in the hotel; the angry, unhappy waiter.

And you would recognise M. Hulot too: the eligible bachelor who canâ??t keep himself out of trouble or his pipe out of his mouth for long enough to chat up the lonely blonde girl with the funny hair-do.

Your sides will not split with laughing out loud. But must it hurt to watch comedy? M. Hulotâ??s balls will definitely not get stuck in his zippers anywhere near this film. And you will love him for it.