As up tight as Hulot’s nephew’s parents appear in Mon Oncle, the home that they’ve made for the boy is even more sterile and dead.

An gate attached to a buzzer is the only form of admittance. And whenever that bell rings, Madame Arpel flips a switch to turn on the dolphin fountain situated just in front of the house to impress gates. Oddly, though, it’s only left on for specific visitors and definitely not Hulot. He almost doesn’t count as a person. And with the way the Arpel’s speak of him, it would seem as if he isn’t.

Either way, the ultra modern surroundings that the Arpel’s son has been forced to live in clearly aren’t to his liking. Upon arriving home, accompanied by his uncle, the boy is told to take his shoes off, hang up his coat properly and put on a pair of slippers. All of this is obeyed, but in the kind of slackness affiliated with a displeased child.

The sterility of his surroundings kill the fun inherent in most kids. And even when the boy’s playing with a ball on the front stoop, it doesn’t look like he’s having too much fun. But how much fan can anyone have in a museum at the age of seven.

All of the button operated excess, sleekly designed, but not comfortable furniture and automated kitchen are meant to make life easier on the Arpels. But what winds up happening is something akin to theater. The family’s made to act a specific way around company, forcing itself to smile at the modern atrocity that it lives in.

Flipping a steak has never been so easy – nor spraying it with some clear liquid. And while Mrs. Arpel continues on, her neighbor, attired in ridiculous clothing, can only congratulate the hostess on a fine house. Viewers get the idea that this neighbor isn’t just saying that, but she’s also alone and depressed about being surrounded by a modern home with no one to share it with.

Having all of this finery doesn’t substitute for human affection. That might not be the point – exactly – of Mon Oncle, but it gets pretty close.

This particular Hulot outing is again frequently touted as Tati’s finest hour. That, though, really needs to be reserved for a latter effort. Of course, all of these films working with the same basic thesis should unite them in some way. And each is similar to the previous film. But there’s an even better distillation of the modern day thirteen years off.