In a cinematic postcard, sent from a seaside summer resort, Tati observes the forced gaiety and gently absurd antics of the English and French on vacation. A stream of sight and sound gags, this is comedy as choreography, plotless (we seem to be coming in sideways on some larger narrative, taking place in some other film); and virtually without dialogue. Or, rather, with the almost inaudible dialogue that lays waste the speaker's vanity even as he speaks. It's a deadpan use of sound: recurring motifs such as the creak of the dining room door, not funny in themselves, build to the point of hilarity. And as in a dance, people are recurring motifs, as well: the English couple who stroll in slow motion, the woman with the petits chignons, the head waiter who suffers needlessly and anew with each meal, and of course, M. Hulot, with his pipe and hat, and his wicked tennis stroke that is outdone only by his whole-body ping-pong style. Tati's is the art of the anti-climax: no motivations are set up, no gag is ever played out to its conclusion, and night always passes to morning with the sigh of a well-timed dissolve. Les vacances are a series of near misses and minor disasters, but the beauty of it is, nobody seems to notice.