Popular reviews

• 

  Review by Carlos Valladares ★★★★½

  Says more about beauty and the human condition in 9 minutes than most directors can muster up in 90 minutes.

  Reviews of Taris will inevitably note its stop-motion high-jinks, its technical trickery, and Jean Vigo's slick approach to an otherwise lite-banal subject: the celebrated-of-his-day (now forgotten) French swimmer Taris. But a cursory glance of these reviews (both on Letterboxd and on the larger Interwebs) don't satisfy me. Why? Because almost all of them are content with diminishing Taris's bold, philosophical accomplishments, instead labeling it as "Good, but of course it's just a dress rehearsal for L'Atalante." While of course L'Atalante remains Vigo's magnum opus, Taris clarifies, to a shocking degree and in a limited amount of time (a mere 9…

• 

  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★

  Human body and its flow in the water.

• 

  Review by Gui ★★★★

  Jean Vigo's second short film is above everything else a visual exploration of the medium of cinema, playing with underwater angles, reversed shots, frame layering and a number of other tricks to create a stunning aesthetic for his 'documentary'. He films swimming champion Jean Taris performing many swimming techniques, with a peculiarly professional and technical narration on top, teaching the audience how to swim in the same ways. Taking one of the most ordinary things in life and making it something beautiful and almost poetical, Vigo really makes Taris seem like the 'King of Water', like the title literally translates to. Essentially, Taris, Le Roi de L'Eau is a magical and graceful feature that shows Vigo's inspiration for his consequent masterpiece L'Atalante.

• 

  Review by Will Steele ★★★½

  Technically way ahead of its time using its limited runtime to experiment with editing and cinematography. Vigo was an innovator!

• 

  Review by Zoë 🐛 ★★★★

  Vigo and his camera do not focus on fetishizing the body of the athlete doing amazing feats, but instead highlight the beauty of movement in swimming, and swimming as accessible fun. The thesis of Taris is that swimming is for everyone, all you need is some water. Jean Taris, France's champion swimmer, narrates, teaching the audience how to swim, and even though the short starts with an incredibly hypnotic race where Taris speeds by his competition in the pool, his instructions are not about achieving speed but instead about achieving enjoyment, being in your element. The most memorable images are not of Taris's swimming body as a fluid machine, but instead of Taris spinning around underwater and striking a silly pose on the pool floor.

• 

  Review by Pate Duncan ★★★★

  Water, bodies, and light: expose them on celluloid and you’ve got an incredible pairing. It’s just sublime. Inventive slow motion, reverse motion, dissolves, and superimpositions. Gorgeous stuff.

• 

  Review by isabelle

  On paper it amounts to little more than a brief semi-educational film about a professional swimmer, but the act of watching it reveals far more. Not unlike its predecessor À propos de Nice, Taris implies true documentation only to pretty rapidly indulge in the fantastic. Vigo slows footage, speeds it up, isolates minutia of the swimmer's body, and in the finale resorts to straight up fantasy. It becomes less about education and more about celebrating the innate beauty of the human form and its mastery of an element.

• 

  Review by Sally Jane Black

  For a nine minute long instructional video on swimming, it's actually very well shot and lovely.

• 

  Review by nate ★★★

  it’s incredible how far we have come with film and film production. but what’s even more incredible is this short with the limited technology in 1931, it’s editing, cinematography and use of footage for the 1930s is remarkable

• 

  Review by williamfaeleith ★★★

  Short documentary by Jean Vigo about French swimming champion Jean Taris, using pioneering underwater techniques. Beautifully restored.
  Watched on MUBI.

• 

  Review by James Westbrook ★★★½

  The component parts of swimming: the kick of the feet, the rhythm of breath, the swing of the arms. The splash of the water, the ripple of light, every part of the body acting as one. A little hampered by its infotainment packaging, but Vigo brings a playfulness to the form, the way he slows, reverses, and speeds up motion, or the way he slices Jean Taris' movements into a series of close-ups and then reconstitutes them through montage, that brings out the dreamy wistfulness of all this sprightly kineticism.

• 

  Review by 🐱Andrew Chrzanowski🐱 ★★★

  ☆"...but first, just get in the water."☆

  In his second short Taris, roi de l'eau -- also released in English as Jean Taris, Swimming Champion -- just 9 minutes elapses as Jean Vigo profiles the famed French swimmer, the eponymous Olympic medal winner and athletic hero.

  But instead of a dry portrait of the man and his accomplishments, many of which would come after this film anyway, Taris is a short meditation on the human form and the power of muscle and physique. Underwater shots of the swimmer and his powerful technique combine with narration on proper strokes and rhythm, as well as slow-motion and freeze-frame shots that likely audiences had never seen in such wondrous use.

  One can tell…