Come summer, a vacation, a holiday, a break is uppermost on most people’s mind. The world of cinema is rich with holiday themed films, spanning genres. French comic genius Jacques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953) is an all time classic of the genre. The almost silent film sees the titular Hulot, played by Tati, arriving at a beachside resort for a vacation and his bumbling nature causes all sorts of havoc to be unleashed. Rather more complex is Steve Bendelack’s criminally underrated Mr Bean’s Holiday where Rowan Atkinson wins a trip to Cannes and his journey there is typically chaotic. The genius of this film is that rather than being safe and being a usual Mr Bean film, it calls out the pretentiousness of some films chosen to play at the Cannes Film Festival and delightfully raises them to farcical levels.
Todd Phillip’s The Hangover (2009) is a hilarious account of a stag do in Las Vegas that goes horribly wrong and did not deserve the two disastrous sequels it spawned. In William Wyler’s Roman Holiday (1953), princess Audrey Hepburn escapes the confines of her country’s embassy in Rome and falls in with expatriate American reporter Gregory Peck.
Not all break films are fizzy, funny or romantic. In Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy (1954), George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman play a couple travelling across Italy on holiday whose relationship becomes increasingly strained. The couple-with-a-strained-relationship-who-go-on-holiday theme perhaps reached its apogee in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Sheltering Sky (1990), based on Paul Bowles’ 1949 novel, with Debra Winger and John Malkovich as an American couple wandering aimlessly around Northern Africa with Campbell Scott as the third wheel. Look out for an early turn from Timothy Spall. Vittorio Storaro’s majestic cinematography is set to divine music by Ryuichi Sakamoto.
For some, especially me, the best part of going on holiday is the food. Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip series is a perfect example of the food vacation genre. The Trip (2010) sees comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon travel across the UK to sample the finest restaurants. The Trip to Italy (2014) has them travelling across Italy on the same quest and The Trip to Spain (2017) across Spain. Apart from the delicious food on display, what elevates the material to side-splittingly funny levels is the duo’s constant carping at each other and their Michael Caine and Roger Moore impersonations. The films are edited down bite-sized versions of longer television series. If you can, watch the series instead. And a word to the wise, eat before and during the watching process.
If there is food, there must be wine. Jason Wise’s documentary Somm (2012) looks at four sommeliers that attempt to pass one of the hardest tests in the world – the Master Sommelier exam. And, in Alexander Payne’s Sideways (2004), Thomas Haden Church and Paul Giamatti undertake a wine-sodden road trip across the vineyards of California. There, I’m now hungry and thirsty and there’s only one solution. I’m off on a holiday. See you on the other side.
