Tour (2010)

Directed by: Mathieu Amalric | 111 minutes | drama, comedy | Actors: Miranda Colclasure, Suzanne Ramsey, Dirty Martini, Julie Atlas Muz, Angela de Lorenzo, Alexander Craven, Mathieu Amalric, Damien Odoul, Ulysse Klotz, Joseph Roth, Aurélia Petit, Antoine Gouy, Pierre Grimblat, Jean-Toussaint Bernard, Anne Benoît Florence Ben Sadoun, Erwan Ribard, Julie Ferrier, Franzo Curcio, André S. Labarthe, Jean-François Marquet, Laurent Roth, Alexia Crisp-Jones, Hélène Houël, Feriel, Erick Lenoir, Xavier Pottier

There are those films in which the main characters immediately arouse sympathy; this is often a matter of personal preference, but there are also some universal elements to be mentioned, such as the extent to which the viewer is allowed into the intimate atmosphere of the characters and the phenomenon of ‘the eternal underdog’. And then you’re in the right place with ‘Tournée’, a loosely filmed combination of documentary coverage of a subculture and raw characterization of its main character, theater impresario Joachim Zand (Mathieu Amalric; ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’).

Zand is one of those flawed figures that you can’t hate, while he goes to great lengths to achieve it. The little stable, divorced Frenchman behaves like an endearingly dominant person who insults people, is actually not a leader but looking for a family; he seems to find it in the troupe of American variety artists that Amalric gathered as a director to shape his raggedly charming project. Especially the portrayal of the female camaraderie and the somewhat uneasy role of Zand in it work like a train; the burlesque show scenes are also beautifully and lovingly portrayed; at the same time we smile when the impresario is seduced by a gas station attendant on his way to his children in Paris.

Unfortunately, Amalric focuses a bit too much on expanding the storyline around Zand in Paris, which distracts attention from the interesting core story: Zand and the girls on tour. At the end, the director tries to add some drama in this area, but the acting talent of the needy lady in question – the beautifully voluptuous Mimi Le Meaux (Miranda Colclasure) – falls short again; that’s the risk of amateur actors and ‘Tournée’ goes out a bit because of this. A visually attractive night candle, for which Amalric was able to pick up the director’s prize and the FIPRESCI Award (film critics) in the last edition of Cannes – in 2010 under the chairmanship of Tim Burton. No small reward indeed.