Starring Mathieu Amalric and Miranda Colclasure. In English and French with English subtitles. Unrated. Plays Friday to Monday, January 7 to 10, and Wednesday, January 12, at the Vancity Theatre

What a wonderful idea! Inspired equally by a collection of Colette’s autobiographical essays about her music-hall days first published in 1913 and director-star Mathieu Amalric’s personal appreciation of the American “new burlesque” movement, On Tour is a road movie with a difference (and not only because it generally prefers rails to asphalt).

Joachim Zand (Amalric) was once a successful TV producer, but bad debts and worse decisions drove him into exile in the United States. Now he’s back with a troupe of strong-minded, sharp-tongued, and immensely talented bump-and-grind artistes, but his past is still undermining him at every turn. Obliged to stick to France’s coastal cities, he desperately seeks decent venues, especially in Paris. He also has pissed-off children to contend with, an unforgiving and invisible ex-wife, and friends who are only slightly more helpful than avowed enemies. No wonder the guy smokes like a munitions factory and drinks like a guppy.

Looking touchingly frail, and facially highlighted by a magnificently sleazy moustache, Amalric has finally found a part that suits his peculiar talents perfectly. As he squires Mimi Le Meaux, Kitten on the Keys, Dirty Martini, and a few other real-life American cabaret artists from Le Havre to Nantes and other striptease backwaters, the spin-doctoring never stops and bullshit is basically indistinguishable from everyday discourse. Still, for all his faults—indeed because of them—Zand emerges as an immensely sympathetic figure.

On Tour tells a small story, but it tells it supremely well. You could call it a slice of life, except for one thing: it’s more fun than half a dozen fantasies.