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Review

The find of 2009's Philly Cinefest for this reviewer is the utterly disarming, wildly stylized Rumba. This tragicomic film is equal part Jacques Tati and Rolf de Heer, strange bedfellows indeed, and yet it is a total original, absolutely singular. Abel and Gordon, physical farceurs extraordinaire, play a couple who work together in a little French peasant school —- she teaches English while he oversees its Phys. Ed. program —- but they really live to dance, and even enter competitions. It’s a simple Tati-esque fable at first, virtually dialogue-free, as the actors brilliantly mime their way through a series of mundane daily routines that, thanks to some double-jointed maneuvers, they turn into inventively antic, witty moments. The cartoon-colored Rumba turns darker in its second half, but is no less hilarious, as certain unnerving de Heer elements inform its narrative. What originally seemed like an escapist lark turns into a rather serious —- and humbling —- meditation on the unexpected vagaries of life.

 -- Joe Baltake