Rumba

JAZZ HANDS! Well, actually Gordon and Abel are dancing salsa-style.

The sight gag, when properly executed, can be a thing of great beauty. Think of Jacques Tati trying to navigate the glass doors of a modernist building in Playtime or Buster Keaton standing motionless in a cyclone while a house falls around him. Abel and Gordon love the sight gag, and Rumba offers gorgeously executed visual jokes by two masters of the form.

They play a loving couple (named, conveniently enough, Dominique and Fiona) whose great joy is dancing. Gordon has the lean gawkiness of Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl, and Abel looks like, well, a male version of Olive Oyl—all arms and legs. But when they move, Abel and Gordon are surprisingly graceful. How sad it feels, then, when an accident leaves Gordon one-legged and Abel suffering from short-term memory loss.

Amazingly, they turn this grim premise into an excuse for a series of mostly wordless jokes: he can’t remember what ingredients he’s added to a recipe, and so keeps adding egg after egg; she accidentally lights her wooden leg on fire; they try valiantly to activate an automatic door (this one clearly a direct nod to Tati). There are more, but describing them doesn’t do them justice. A pratfall is worth a thousand words.

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