Trafic

Trafic (Jacques Tati, 1971) When the late Carl Sagan was touring the country, mostly around college campuses, expounding on an upcoming unmanned Mars mission, he would do a little slide presentation about the limitations of exploring other planets by merely photographic means, using Earth as a test subject to demonstrate that merely pretty pictures would not give the full story and might actually be deceiving about conditions on said spheroid. The upshot of the thing was that any being looking at Earth from above would get the distinct impression that automobiles were the dominant species on the planet and humans merely their parasites.

Cute idea, but the point was made.

That thought bubbles up as you watch Trafic, the final film featuring writer-director Jacques Tati as the character M. Hulot—made a few years after his gargantuan masterpiece, Playtime. In Trafic, Hulot is a designer for a car company called Altra, which is in its final preparations to display their latest product, an elaborate camping car, at an auto show in Brussels. A display backdrop is being prepared and transportation for the prototype finalized for the event, with a lot riding on the intricate design to be displayed. In such a frenetic atmosphere everything that can go wrong does go wrong, despite the amount of planning and foresight applied to every detail.

For one thing, the pieces of the display must be loaded and the hatchback itself carefully hauled into the truck to make its way to Brussels. All well and good, but the long drive will have many speed-bumps along the way, like border-crossings, proper paperwork, traffic jams, and potential breakdowns en route. These can be as simple as a bad tire, running out of gas, or merely having an incompetent driver (Marcel Fravel). Hulot rides along in the truck observing as things fall apart and attempting to help as best he can.

Zipping along with them is the company's public relations person (Maria Kimberly), who presents a together facade, but is something of a mercurial harpy, who seems more concerned with her image than the company's. She, at times, seems the complete opposite of a public relations person.

Meanwhile the gargantuan auto-show goes on with Altra's big-wigs all set to present with nothing to show for it, a situation that isn't made any better through the many phone-calls updating them on the progress—or lack of it—in getting the prototype to market.

The car is a little miracle of design—as intricate as a James Bond vehicle, if he had a license to camp. There are so many hidden features that one needn't go to a sporting goods store for anything extra—just get in the car and go. It comes complete with pull-out tent, a built-in grill, as well as camping chairs and beds. It's such an amazing vehicle that one knows that, like a Tucker, it wouldn't sell, anyway...that is, if the thing could get to market.

Like so much of Tati's work, it is episodic with a major story-line to prop the thing up. And it might as well be a silent film as 90% of the gags are visual—10% being for the sound effects Tati inserts in post-production.

It is not his best work, but it is entertaining, and leaves one with the melancholy certainty that cars might, indeed, be the prominent inhabitant of the world, and that the parasites dealing with them show no signs of intelligent life.