There, some teenaged pranksters steal Maria's fluffy dog and place a mophead underneath her sports car, making her think her pet has been killed.

Hulot walks with Maria to the subway station and before they can part, he is forced back upwards by commuters heading in the opposite direction.

"[4] Roger Ebert gave the film 3+1⁄2 stars out of four praising Tati for creating humorous incidents that "are so involved they're almost impossible to describe, but Hulot copes with them with good nature and never loses his philosophical equilibrium.

"[5] Film theorist Michel Chion wrote: "Trafic turns out to be as impure a patchwork as Play Time was pure and intransigent.

Nonetheless, it is an endearing film for different reasons: we are invited to a picaresque journey of a man who leaves Paris to go to Amsterdam for a car show, but arrives much too late to participate.

"[6] Jonathan Romney, in his Criterion Collection essay, felt "Tati certainly appears less in control than in the vast coordinated ballet of Play Time.

"[2] Gary Giddins disagreed with Romney's assessment in his book Warning Shadows, writing he believes Trafic to have been "transcendent," as well as "misperceived" and "neglected.

"[8] The film was released on DVD by The Criterion Collection on 15 July 2008, in a special edition double-disc set, and on Blu-ray on 28 October 2014 as a part of The Complete Jacques Tati.