Bar some shorts and made-for-TV movies, Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, Quantum Of Solace) hasn't directed a film since 2001; he brings a freewheeling documentary style to On Tour, a drama that sees a pressurised tour manager struggle to get his troupe of burlesque dancers from one French hotel to the next.
Amalric plays Joachim Zand, a divorced middle-aged grump who has 'no regrets, no remorse and no memories,' but that's hard to believe - it's in his weary eyes. A former TV producer who left France for America when he owed money left, right and centre, Zand has returned with a burlesque show with a difference - the girls here are "women doing shows for women." Taking the girls around France, deliberately avoiding Paris where he is hounded for owed cash, Zand attempts to squeeze money out of old but now hostile friends and to reconnect with his former life by taking his two young sons (Simon and Joseph Roth) on tour.
Amalric is at pains to convey that the dancers, all strip tease artists playing themselves, are a tight little unit, a real family, but apart from Mimi Le Meaux (Colclasure), with whom Zand has an attraction to, the writer-director gives them nothing to do once they're off stage. The relationship between Le Meaux and Zand, however, is a delight, veering from sweet (both realise that the chances of meeting their one true loves at this stage are slim) and nasty, with Zand telling her, "I could love you... If you had any talent." There aren't enough scenes of them together, though, and On Tour never settles down, preferring instead to bob about the place looking for a real story to tuck into. The search is fruitless.
What's left to enjoy is watching a man at the end of his tether but refusing to let it drag him down. His decision to keep going against impossible odds renders him endearing despite the terrible things we're told about him: his ex wife is nowhere to be seen, his brother wants nothing to with him and his two sons would prefer to be as far away from his as possible.
An interesting character study, On Tour definitely is. An interesting movie, less so.
