On Tour (Tournée): homage to cinema

Mathieu Amalric has gone up the steps of the Palais as an actor in a good many festivals, but this will be his first time as a director.

On Tour (Tournée) is Mathieu Amalric’s fourth feature film. All his films have an autobiographical thread. In Mange ta soupe, he remembers his parents, in Wimbledon Stage (Le Stade de Wimbledon), he films the woman he loved (actress Jeanne Balibar), and Public Affairs (La Chose publique), commissioned by Arte on the theme Masculine/Feminine, deals with the end of a love affair.

In On Tour (Tournée), he plays the lead and gives his character his mother’s maiden name (Zand) – a character he says is close to his own experience in recent years: a successful television producer, who has given up everything to start a new life in America and who returns to France, on tour with New Burlesque! Scantily dressed women provide scenic performances, where strip tease is mixed with juggling, singing and piano playing. These are not beauty queens, or even standard body types. The girls are small or tall, young or old and they are often quite corpulent!

Mathieu Amalric has done the rounds of festivals to put his own troupe together: Mimi le Meaux, Kitten on the Keys, Dirty Martini, Julie Atlas Muz, Evie Lovell and Roky Roulette. And to create the exuberant energy of New Burlesque, the film maker decided to organise a real tour, playing to full houses and impersonal hotels, where the girls add a touch of colour and imagination.

On Tour also pays homage to cinema. To Fellini, for the curvaceous women and the wonderful poster! To Cassavetes for the family ties between Joachim Zand and Cosmo Vitelli of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Fascinated by the figure of the producer, Mathieu Amalric gives a role to André S. Labarthe and Pierre Grimblat, and wears a moustache in the style of Paulo Branco.