Jacques Tati's film Mon Oncle opens with credits designed as street signs positioned against a construction site, a crane in front of a white high-rise, a Paris so new it's still being built. The city is in the process of modernization. After the opening credit, the film cuts to the city’s old neighborhood consisting of crumbling stone buildings and narrow pathways, juxtaposing the new Paris with the old one. A few street dogs appear in the scene. The camera follows the movement of the dogs traveling from the old neighborhood to the new suburb until they stop in front of a villa of pure shapes and clean lines locked behind an iron gate. One dog crawls into the villa through a hole in the gate while the rest watch a woman, Mme. Arpel, carry it into the house with one hand, almost dropping it to the ground, visibly disgusted by its dirt.
Dog. Flickr, by gildas_f (2009).
The iron gate both physically and metaphorically separates house and inhabitants from the lower end. Outside the villa, the dogs run around freely and enjoy a diversified city landscape, whether impoverished or vibrant. As they reach the street corner, they stop to rummage through the trashcans. The camera, mimicking the frankness of such curiosity, shows a close-up shot of the Arpels’ dog getting a taste of an open can, unveiling the unfiltered delight of the primal instinct. This is something it cannot enjoy in the villa where the whooshing of the vacuum is as offbeat as the fish fountain in the garden. In fact, when Mon Oncle Monsieur Hulot first appears in the film, he wanders the flea market, with the head of a dead fish popping out of his tote. A dog of a food stall bares his teeth to the fish head, as if protesting against the controlling Arpels for their treatment of its peer. And it is in this space outside the villa can we see such lively interaction, which extends beyond human beings and involves the interplay between the living and the inanimate.
Hulot is like the dogs, from his estrangement from his sister Mme. Arpel and her husband to his love of the dirty freedom. He picks up his nine-year-old nephew, Gérard, from school and takes him back to the villa. Yet, halfway through the S-shaped path in the garden, he stops, watches Gérard get into the house, turns around, and leaves. When Mme. Arpel asks, “Are you not coming in?” Hulot doesn’t even bother answering. He simply waves his umbrella in the air gesturing an obvious no, not interested in this seemingly shiny lifestyle. Nor is he interested in the office work. When his brother-in-law tries to get him a job, in an effort to get him out of town and away from Gérard who adores him and is influenced by his nonconforming ways, he botches the job interview, removing his ill-fitting shoes to empty out the sand. He continues to bumble around when M. Arpel offers him a position in his own factory. Meanwhile, Mme. Arpel decides what the disordered and disruptive Hulot needs is a mate.
Replica of Villa Arpel at the Cent Quatre in Paris. Flickr, by Clem (2010).
Perhaps the most hilarious scene occurs when her matchmaking at the villa goes awry, leading to the eventual clash between the two battling forces: dirty freedom versus shiny constraint. Already disconcerted by the M. Arpel’s sudden job offering, Hulot is introduced to a neighbor by Mme. Arpel who hands him a modern gadget, a white stick designed to hold the drinks. “Stick this in the ground. Very practical,” said Mme. Arpel. However, it doesn’t stand, so Hulot has to push it into the sand farther from them while coughing from the smoke that the neighbor blows. It is then the accident occurs: the water stops flowing from the fish fountain and starts coming out from the hole created by the stick. Finally, the very product designed for this high-end life threatens its meticulously maintained orderliness. But the neighbor is still unaware of the scene and goes on rambling on how exceptional M. Arpel and Mme. Arpel are. Only Pichard, who works for M. Arpel, offers to fix the leak while the others move along the inconveniently paved pathway with their supplies, still engaging in ineffective exchange. Fortunately, Pichard, now covered in dirt, appears from the crack, successfully fixing the fountain. But when Mme. Arpel turns on the water, the fish fountain splashes mud all over the place until the water gradually becomes clean again. Hulot, also soaked and dirty, has already gone to the top of the house, and with the help of Gérard, Hulot drops more dirt to the ground, a more outright encroachment on the villa’s constrained orderliness. The villa is now taken over by rawness in a literal sense, ultimately celebrating the triumph of genuineness over affectation in the anxiety of transformation and modernization.
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