The colourful Paris of Mon Oncle, last seen being slowly chipped away by progress, has now vanished almost entirely. Playtime takes as its setting an ultra-modern Paris where familiar landmarks appear only as fleeting reflections in the new buildings of glass and steel. Alternating between Hulot and a group of American tourists, Tati exploits the chaos just below the overly ordered surface of this brave new world. Again moving from one nearly wordless episode to another, Tati sends his alter ego off to make an appointment in a whirring, featureless office complex. He subsequently moves on to an exhibition of new inventions, meets an old friend at an aquarium-like apartment, and wreaks havoc in a snooty new restaurant.
Although ambitious and technically complex this is not the most polished of the Hulot films. It proved unpopular and unprofitable and helped usher in the financial difficulties that would plague Tati late in life before finally getting the recognition it enjoys today. Tati was generally dissatisfied with this film as can be seen in the small extras where he casts the script into the collapsing rubble of the set as it is demolished.
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