Pierre Étaix's Yo Yo is not a silent film. But it might as well be. Here is a film that operates using the visual language pioneered and perfected by American silent comedians like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. But Yo Yo is more than a mere homage: it utilizes their techniques to tell a story of loss and redemption, melancholy and joy that belongs solely to Étaix. To compare him to one of his cinematic countrymen, Étaix is Tati stripped of his distanced curiosity with modern society and technology. Yo Yo exists totally within a world of social conventions and expectations. Yet it isn't stifled by them. Instead, they enhance the genius of his comedy. If Tati had directed a sequence where a crowd of rich socialites converged on a giant mansion, one can't help but imagine that it would end in innocent chaos. But Étaix believed too much in manners and proper behavior to allow that. And there is his genius: his is a world of chaos manifesting itself within societal expectations, not without or in defiance of them.
10/10
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