Before cavemen could tell the most basic joke, he had to rely on other means of eliciting a laugh from the cavewoman he wanted to drag into the back of a cave and ravage. That method was physical comedy. Maybe he’d try to hold on to a fish as it slipped up, up and away from his desperate hands? Or perhaps he’d turn suddenly and hit the friend next to him with the wildebeest racked across his shoulders. Physical comedy was the original tool of love. Accordingly it has evolved (like man) to accommodate more sophisticated times and has become an art form of sorts. Jacques Tati, Charlie Chaplin, John Cleese and (dare I say it?) Rowan Atkinson all have turned the prat fall into a noble convention that few since have mastered. However, if Rumba is any indication, Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy may be the heirs to that great comic tradition.
School teacher couple Fiona (Gordon) and Dom (Abel) enjoy their jobs, but they love Latin dancing even more. After days of skipping around the school and teaching kids how to say “dog” (and then twisting their tongues with English phrases they can’t handle), Dom and Fiona live a quiet but happy life together with the occasional dance contest to be won in the interim. It’s all so cheery and perfect. Their lives fall into disarray when a man attempts to commit suicide by automobile by standing in the middle of the road – only to have the lovebirds swerve off the road into the side of a bridge. They wake up in the hospital with one of her legs amputated and his memory reduced to that of a goldfish.
The two ex-dancers adapt to their new lives but their passion for the activity they can no longer do never dies. Through a fun use of shadows, the film shows the dance that continues through injury unhindered. They make do with their handicaps but eventually Dom, after a run in with a man who wants a chocolate croissant really badly, gets on a bus and forgets where he lives – only to be welcomed by the guilt-stricken man who caused their accident. Fiona searches for Dom but eventually comes to believe he’s lost until a fateful reunion.
It’s a very simple story which comes secondary to the brilliant little chapters of physical comedy. From an attempt to find coffee to a flaming wooden leg the movie just keeps assaulting your funny bone until you give in. If one bit doesn’t get you the next one will. The whole movie just gradually works to disarm you and win you over. The very first joke of the movie, Fiona’s increasingly challenging phrases for the children to repeat did it for me and so the rest of the movie was just a fun romp.
It’s wholly misleading to call Rumba a foreign film. Granted, it’s very European in its style and the spoken language is French – but there’s maybe 5 minutes of dialogue in the entire film. The real substance and communication of the film comes through the perfect, and I mean perfect, body language of Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon. They’re dead on with each and every comedy routine and the film stands on their shoulders. Rumba’s leads may speak French but it’s in every way in the vein of a silent film. Every cyclical act elicits and a laugh and it just doesn’t let up until you give in to its enduring sense of humor.
Seek out Rumba and let it roll over you.
DVD Bonus Features
Considering how phenomenal the two leads are, you’d like to think there was more on the disc besides a few outtakes and deleted scenes. Here we have a rare moment when people might actually want to hear the two leads talk about their work and lives and we get nothing. The deleted scenes are the lesser comical moments but they’re still funny. But the outtakes are quite enjoyable considering how long some of their bits are. You might not realize it at first but some of the routines have only one or two shots making up two or three minutes.
"Rumba" is on sale September 15, 2009 and is rated NR. Comedy, Foreign. Directed by Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, Bruno Romy. Written by Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, Bruno Romy. Starring Fiona Gordon, Bruno Romy, Dominique Abel.
