PlayTime

There's virtually no plot in Playtime, and no reason for one. Hulot has a doomed meeting with a businessman, while Barbara, a young American tourist, travels with a tour group through Paris (or rather, "Paris"). Their paths cross, but their worlds (mostly) do not. During the day, everyone is at work in a steel-and-glass labyrinth, where the wonders of the world barely exist, except as reflections, ciphers, annoyances. The conveniences of the modern world are, of course, not conveniences at all. As the day continues, the cracks begin to let in a little light. Small drops of color start to creep into the corners of the frame. Moments of human interaction begin to happen. On a crowded bus, people accommodate each other. A chance meeting at dusk leads to a living diptych of two families in separate apartments seeming to entertain each other. Five workmen carry a pane of glass in a bizarre dance that draws an audience. All this sets up the second half of the film, the opening night of a restaurant-nightclub, where final preparations are still underway as the patrons begin to arrive. And what follows is a full hour of the most wonderful film sequence I suspect I'll ever see. It's a perfect, intricate choreography of humanity meeting modernity, sometimes with hilarious failure, and sometimes beautifully, with absolute, serendipitous, perfect chaos. Those are the moments in film -- in art -- in life! -- that I find I treasure more than anything.