On Tour Review

• 3rd May 2011

On Tour follows the lives of a touring New Burlesque troupe as they travel through provincial French towns with manager Mathieu Amalric (who also directs), who lured them from America with the promise of a Paris show. However, Amalric is down on his luck and as he struggles with his past, the likelihood of him making good on his promise is thrown into jeopardy, while his relationship with star attraction Mimi Le Meaux begins to change.

Though a work of fiction, On Tour feels like a documentary and to some extent doubles as one, real-life burlesque dancers are cast as the troupe, and the cast and crew actually stayed in the hotels which provide much of the setting for the film. The performance scenes too, are shot at real venues in front of real local audiences. In keeping with the verite ethos, a lot of time is dedicated to capturing the improvised (or at least seemingly improvised) backstage dialogue between the performers, scenes which benefit in their realism no doubt from the casting of non-actors and which provide a good deal of the film’s humour in their candidness.

Meanwhile, the less ambiguously fictional plight of Amalric’s manager, as he fights to secure the venue for the promised Paris finale, provides the main narrative thrust (without which we might have an enlightening, entertaining if directionless pseudo-doc). Amalric is a fine actor and does the slightly seedy, down-at-heel character very well as he confronts characters from his past in his attempts to do right by his troupe, and later attempts to balance his day job with looking after his two young sons.

For all its truth/fiction line-blurring, On Tour is, ultimately, a road movie, and by the strangely heart-warming and thoroughly satisfying denouement, had achieved what all good road movies ought to and proved that it’s the journey, not the destination, that matters.

Adam Richardson