My 3rd watch. I think it isn't until your 3rd or 4th watch that you can actually enjoy the movie. This is because of Tati's often-criticized approach of using only wide shots, mostly static, with multiple "subplots"happening on screen at the same time. In other words, the camera never indicates what you're supposed to be looking at so your eye tends to wander in search of what it might be. Meanwhile you're losing the story.

But on 3rd or 4th watch you're already familiar with the story so the wandering eye approach actually works. This is when you unlock all the hidden side-stories that are packed into the screen.

Let's take the opening scene. Wide shot of an airport. On 1st watch you'll probably key in on the man & his mother closest to the camera, especially since they're the only ones talking (in mostly unintelligible mumbles). The man seems to have a cold and is sniffling while his doting mother is asking him endless motherly questions like whether he packed everything, etc, much to his passive annoyance. But on 2nd watch you might notice what's going on behind them: a parade of uniformed workers (cleaning people, flight attendants, a soldier, etc) who are walking stiffly up and down the corridors in a comical Robocop fashion--all except for the lazy janitor who seems like he's searching for someone (who or what?). On 3rd watch I watched the soldier who had a really funny trajectory. He's waiting for someone, as we learn later, but can't stand still so he keeps marching up & down the square as the case may be, pausing only occasionally to sneak a peak at the attractive cleaning lady in the bathroom. Alas she's only changing the towel dispenser. The soldier marches on. Ultimately the person he's waiting for shows up, some type of subordinate carrying papers. The soldier chews him out briefly then marches to his gate. He passes an attractive young woman at the bar who stands up and waves "Daddy!" which startles an old man standing nearby (evidently not her daddy).

All this happens in the first 3 minutes, all at the same time.

These same characters show up later in the film at various times, though none of them is a primary character in the story. Playtime is really a dozen stories all packed into 1 film, all happening at the same time. What's more, their stories periodically intersect with each other, then diverge again, which might lead your eye to follow a different character.

If you were to count all the combinations of subplots that the viewer's eye could follow I bet it would be dozens. As far as I know, no other filmmaker has been this revolutionary in the art of storytelling. And to think, at the time of the film's release, it was criticized for "not having a story"!