Trafic

(Jacques Tati, France 1971, 96 min., DCP)

In his final feature film appearance, Tati’s bumbling Monsieur Hulot takes to Paris’s highways and byways. Hulot is employed as an auto company’s director of design, and accompanies his new vehicle (a camper tricked out with absurd gadgetry) to an auto show in Amsterdam. Naturally, the road is paved with modern-age mishaps. This late-career delight is a masterful demonstration of the comic genius’s expert timing and sidesplitting visual gags, and a bemused last look at technology run amok.