Festival Coverage || By: || May 13, 2010 10:35 AM EST

At Cannes: Mathieu Amalric Hits the Burlesque Trail with Tournée

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After the self-indulgent and ludicrous Robin Hood, which screened out of competition, the real festival competition began with a healthy dose of zaftig T&A. Although the press gave actor/director Mathieu Amalric's English/French-language burlesque film Tournée (On Tour) a ho-hum reaction, they surely couldn't be caught sleeping through the myriad striptease scenes.

After a promising opening scene that jolted the sleepy press corp out of their early-Cannes slumber with the ear-shattering (and excellent) song "Have Love Will Travel" by the Sonics, the film rapidly descends into a simple panoply of one striptease/burlesque act after the next. Joachim Zand (Amalric) has ditched his career as a Parisian television producer to become the manager of a troupe of female American New Burlesque performers. He takes the group on tour around small-town France—Le Havre, Nantes—where every night is another grind to secure a venue and wrangle his "girls."

The New Burlesque performers in the film are the real deal (as are their voluptuous and ever-present breasts) -- Mimi Le Meaux, Kitten on the Keys, Dirty Martini, Julie Atlas Muz, and Evie Lovelle -- and as such their acting is at best grating and at worst embarrassing. Amalric, best known to U.S. audiences for his roles in the films Quantum of Solace and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, seemingly never quite knows where he wants to take the film. We know little of his character, and the burlesque performers never come across as anything more than not-too-bright objets d'art.

Nonetheless, Amalric may have a leg up on the only other French film chosen for competition: Bertrand Tavernier's La Princesse de Montpensier. We all remember Tavernier's last film, the Tommy Lee Jones-starring In the Electric Mist, right? Oh wait.



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