Intransitive Encounter : Sino-U.S. Literatures and the Limits of Exchange by Nan Z. Da (review)

Abstract

587 deep history of Léger’s Ballet Mécanique pays off enormously at this point in the book) (65). An especially ludic example is the moment in Mon Oncle where the silhouettes of Monsieur and Madame Arpel looking out the two circular windows of their home at night make the windows look like enormous “eyes with moving pupils” (66). The final chapter turns toward modern architecture and class critique, deepening the historicizing work achieved in chapter one. Here, Turvey shows that Tati’s cinema, which often lampoons postwar modernist architecture, is not resistant to modernity (as is often assumed) but satirical of how the bourgeoisie adopt and impoverish the formal élan of experimental aesthetics. The Arpels’ home in Mon Oncle, for instance, is bad Le Corbusier, and the comedy that ensues from it (e.g., the two enormous windows mentioned above make the house look like a face, the water from the garden fountain sounds like urination) are Tati’s critique of midcentury French bourgeois suburbanization and how the obsession with status makes the middle class, well, ridiculous. It is because Turvey has so effectively gotten us to appreciate the diffuseness of Tati’s comedy—the fact that anyone and anything can be funny if we simply take the time to notice it—that his afterword shines so brightly. Here, Turvey performs an extended reading of the under-studied documentary Parade (1974), which Tati made for Swedish television in Stockholm. Parade is essentially a filmed circus performance, but the distinction between actors and nonactors remains persistently unclear. Turvey shows how Parade’s generic instability extends from Tati’s interest in how humor can permeate any and all situations and people. Under Turvey’s analytic lens, Parade suddenly makes complete sense without losing its inherent (and productive) strangeness. Play Time is a subtle, intelligent—and wonderfully funny—book. It has much to offer both Tati novices and his connoisseurs.