Instant French
1965 · 21m · Canada
Directed by David Bairstow
A group of businessmen reluctantly take French lessons to remain competitive, then gradually discover that fluency in another language brings unexpected benefits to their work.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1965 industrial comedy about middle-aged men learning French for profit should be a corporate snoozefest, but Bairstow's willingness to let the premise sit in its own absurdity — watching fluency become something almost spiritual in a capitalist context — is genuinely weird in a way that sneaks up on you.
Bairstow's satire operates within a clear lineage of postwar educational comedies, but the formal restraint here—letting whimsy emerge through dialogue and situation rather than spectacle—places it in conversation with Tati's gentle social observation, a craft decision that elevates what could have been mere workplace satire.
The pivot from cynical pragmatism to genuine cultural awakening lives or dies on the actors' willingness to play the vulnerability underneath the boardroom posturing, and whoever cast these businessmen understood that a single moment of authentic wonder breaks the whole film open.