The Vancouver Sun covers the déshabillé stars of Tournée.
The film chronicles a troupe of American burlesque dancers who are touring France in the company of a down-on-his-luck producer [Mathieu Amalric, who also co-wrote and directed the film]. Joachim is a Bob-Fosse-meets-Ben-Gazzara character who struggles to find venues for his performers.
The women answer to such stage names as (in ascending order of outrageousness) Evie Lovelle, Julie Atlas Muz, Mimi le Meaux, Dirty Martini and Kitten on the Keys. Martini said she thought they were being hired to train French actresses in their style of erotic dance, after which their work would be done. Playing herself in the movie and travelling across France made her fall in love with the country. “Thanks for your cheese,” she concluded.
Even though there are only 17 minutes of onstage performance in the film, Amalric took the women — and one male burlesque dancer who goes by the name Roky Roulette — on an actual tour around the French countryside, playing before live audiences.
The performers make a clear distinction between stripping and burlesque, beginning with the fact that their bodies, while doubtless sexy, are neither flawless nor skinny. “Part of my burlesque journey is using burlesque as a form to educate women in the need for their own sexual expression,” said Martini. “I think that our sexual expression in this world is completely controlled by men and by the media, and so we are all here to bring down those stereotypes just a little for you. Nobody’s saying how burlesque is different from pole-stripping; the movie just shows it.”
…Adding a note of gravity to the mood of gaiety, Amalric explained how he was inspired by the writings of the early 20th-century dance hall performer Colette. “I fell in love with the way she was telling her life on the road, and I was searching for something today that would correspond and tell the same story as this woman.”