Slack Bay (2016) User Reviews

Strange unusual good film, for curious and dreamers.

[gwenmollo · 7/10 · 20 May 2016]

Bruno Dumont made a Bruno Dumont film in his original region with real inhabitants. Like Li'l Quinquin, some actors are amateurs, some are pros, sadly...

There is no real plot here, no story. Just some days in the North of the France in the 1910's. There are some poetry, comedy, but all of the film is made by the situation of the actors, amateur or pro. The professional are to overdo : Binoche and Luchini are sometimes good, often to much, and so bad... The amateurs voices are always hard to understand, even if your are french. Maybe with the subtitle will be better.

I like this film, the photo are not so good (first film for the director in digital) the colors are usually blurry. There is no real story, the actors are inaudible or to overdo, it's hard to understand, the end are (for me ) not good... But ... i like it ! It's funny, shabby, unhealthy, beautiful, full of love, with no mockery. The director like is region, the people from there (like the Redneck in the USA) and made fun with their reputations. It's a little jewel of burlesque, like a Belgian film.

It's a unusual film, don't except a traditional thing. Take It As It Comes.

Should I call it a "Mysterious surreal" or a " Simple abstract based" movie?

[MMJM-2264 · 7/10 · 14 September 2020]

Before I watch the movie, I knew that I'm gonna think a lot to understand the concept of the movie as I knew I'm watching a surreal. As I've watched some of David Lynch's movies and realized the meaning of the symbols and what they represent by reading some reviews, I searched for this one too. But I disagree with most of them. Those reviews were just trying to make all the non-sense things in the movie somehow believable and natural; A simple social class difference and a strange love between poor and rich. But what about all those symbolic actions? The silence of the cannibal fishermen and the curiosity of the Van Peteghems. Delightful flight of Isabelle and flying run of the Aude? Why does the inspector gets blown up more when he fails to figure things out? Here are my opinions:

Ma Loute behaves himself when he is about to eat someone and prevents any damage to the ones he loves. He searches for a charm in his colorless life and tries to keep it. Meanwhile the Van Peteghems are drowning through the charm that Andre is tired of the awesome view to the bay_Meanwhile the growth of a plant amazes him_. Ma Loute's parents are used to living colorless and meaningless so they stick to the way they've been living for their whole life.

Billie, the boy that actually tries to be a girl and acts like he is really a girl dressing like the boys, tries to escape who he is. Or maybe it's because he is an ordinary transsexual.

His mother Aude is someone who worships the beauty, concerns too much and feels guilty because Billie's father is either her father or her brother. She loves and hates Billie at the same time and maybe that's why Billie doesn't like to be himself.

Andre seems to be the wisest through them. He has some more valuable thoughts. But he can't think right about many simple things and it doesn't bother him at all. If you call all the elements just non-sense, at least you can count them as the characters points of view_There's plenty of them in the movie!_.

Christian is so weird as he acts like a dumb. He is kinda optimist and perhaps that's why he acts dumb. He likes almost everything and has no problem with most of the things but some, such as having trouble by being hugged by everyone but his sister. He has some precious conceptual dialogues which questions the way of his thinking. Is he really a fool or just can't behave himself?!

Isabelle who tries to find peace in every moment _while she can get over nervous easily_ and loves her family is symbol of a saint person. Flying over the Mary's statue might prove that.

The Inspectors and the soldiers are dump too. Their job is to figure things out but that's what they can't even think about. Machin is the boss and Malfoy obeys in any situation. He has no creativity on his own and easily gets convinced by Machin's ideas.

Machin gets blown up every time he fails to solve a mystery_but finally he is announced as the hero_ and finally flies because he becomes a balloon! Then everybody try to save their hero. He gets shot and survives. I don't know what does it represent.

Nadage is jealous. But mostly jealous of poor Ma Loute and Billie's love, not any of the high class things. She knows what she wants. She doesn't look above her head. She has nothing special but Ma Loute finally chose her as she didn't lied to him. Ma Loute didn't want Billie's fortune either. He was a lover, trying to make a change. He is used to his alley and doesn't need more.

The movie has a great idea but the director failed to symbolize everything in the way we enjoy discovering the codes and that's why I rated the movie like this.

That's actually all I understood from this surreal. You might disagree but it might help you figure mysteries out and prevents you to fly as a balloon!

P.S: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/bruno-dumonts-self-surpassing-inventiveness-in-slack-bay This is the only link I found useful.

M.M.J.M

Everybody sucks

[Drusca · 6/10 · 18 September 2019]

Binoche drags this movie down. Most of the other participants, especially Luchini, manage to actually be funny, while she does a tone-deaf pantomime and kind of walks all over everyone else whenever she's in a scene. The misanthropy that permeated 'Li'l Quinquin' is also present here, with Dumont seeming to say that everywhere you turn, you run into idiots. The poor are barely human at all, the middle class is a bunch of bumbling idiots, while the "upper" class is delusional and degenerate. Some of the cinematography is quite beautiful, with an almost 3D quality to it.

For Dumont fans only

[MOscarbradley · 2/10 · 10 August 2017]

Anyone who doubted that Bruno Dumont could do comedy might have been surprised by "P'tit Quinquin" which was weirdly funny, surreal and highly imaginative. However, if you skipped "P'tit Quinquin" and have come straight to "Slack Bay", then your doubts will have been confirmed for this bit of slapstick is about as funny as an appendectomy. The setting is the Northern French coast in the summer of 1910 and follows the far-from-hilarious exploits of three sets of characters; a well-to-to family, there on vacation, a local family of muscle-gatherers and a couple of policemen, one very large and fat, the other small and thin, there to investigate some mysterious disappearances.

The policemen are obviously based on Laurel and Hardy, though it's unlikely this pair will raise a smile let alone a laugh. Dumont's idea of comedy is to have most of his characters fall down at regular intervals though some do take to levitating by the time the film is over. There is, of course, a sicker and more Dumontesque sensibility at work here, since the muscle-gatherers are also a family of cannibals, ('Anyone want more foot', says the mother to her sons), who are killing off the tourists and eating them.

The star, for want of a better word, of this rubbish is Juliette Binoche, cast as a comic grande-dame. At least she aligns herself with Dumont's vision which, in this case, isn't saying much. Visually the film is very beautiful and like "P'tit Quinquin" is weird enough not be boring but that is about all you can say in its favour. This one is for Dumont completists only.

La Belle et Malade Epoque

[dromasca · 8/10 · 18 August 2016]

The centennial anniversary of the breaking of WWI was an opportunity for several books to be written and films to be made (most of them documentaries) not only about the war itself, but also about the years that preceded it. Those were the finals years of a period that had started at the end of the Franco – Prussian war in 1870 and had seen a period of more than four decades of peace, never encountered in the written history of Europe. For many people living it those times La Belle Epoque seemed to signal an apparent stability based on the balance between the power of a few Empires and Republics. A middle class appeared in Europe allowing for economic development, arts flourished, and life was good for many. Yet, the political tensions were present at the level of the relations between the big powers in Europe, and many of the national societies were sick. Which is exactly the theme of Bruno Dumont's film 'Ma Loute'.

Dumont is one of the masters of a cinema sub-genre which I will call 'films about degenerated people' (or social, or family relations, or a combination of these. Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet 's Delicatessen is another example of the genre, so is Dogtooth by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. 'Ma Loute' not only takes the genre one step ahead because of the quality of the execution, but also provides political and historical dimensions by locating the story of mysterious disappearances, social conflict between the rich tourists and the poor fishermen and a love story which is impossible for many reasons in a precise place – the North-West of France close to Calais and time – the end of La Belle Epoque.

Viewers should be warned that this is no easy film to watch. 5% of the audience walked out the theater I was in. Among those who stayed I suspect that half disliked what they have seen, with the negative reactions between considering the theme disgusting to ridiculous. The acting style is also very heavily and intentionally exaggerated. It is the description of sick families, of hateful relations between classes, of a non-functional society at all levels. The fact that all these seem to get some rational explanation may satisfy for a moment, but then the film slides in a combination of grotesque and fantastic (the levitation scenes) that is close to genial. Watching fine actors as Fabrice Luchini, Juliette Binoche,or Valeria Bruni Tedeschi is of course a delight but do not expect them to act like in any other movies that you have seen with them in the past. The young couple acted by Brandon Lavieville and Raph both at their first film add some level of innocence, but all is under the sign of the deformed mirrors here.

'Ma Louche' is a very different kind of cinema experience, viewers take risks watching it, and they are rewarded with a surprise which according to taste and approach can be very good or very unpleasant.

Certainly bizzarre but not very creative

[imdb-4066 · 2/10 · 1 April 2018]

Everything in this movie is bizarre: the story, the acting, even the voice of the actors. In itself, weirdness is not necessarily bad; Tati, Monthy Python or Jeunet have made great weird movies. However, Slack Bay lacks the necessary dose of creativity to make weirdness interesting. Too often it feels like what happens on the screen is odd just for the sake of being bizarre or that the actors are improvising without inspiration.

Beautiful, surreal , macabre and unexplained

[ayoreinf · 8/10 · 15 July 2016]

It's a surreal macabre comedy, populated mostly by nasty cartoons, many of them are simply grotesque. While Bruno Dumont, the writer director of this film does tell us a very clear story, namely we all will understand what did actually take place on this bay, he never bothers explaining the reasons for the bizarre behavior of his cartoon characters. So we get an unsolveable mystery filled with mean caricatures of the uppermost bourgeoisie and of the police. He does get some of the best actors and actresses in France hamming their way through this weird story. And I would've rated it higher if I thought there was a reason behind this folly. One thing is sure, even if Dumont has some bizarre reasoning for this story - he doesn't want to reveal it to his audience.

One more issue I have to refer to: the name of this film. In English its Slack Bay, which alludes to the bay and to the nature of its residences. In Hebrew it became Disappearance Bay alluding to the mystery taking place there. The French name, that probably is the original is Ma Loute, the name of one of the main characters of this movie. Each name signifies different intentions, and I can't see why the original French name wasn't kept. You don't really have to translate a name.

Desperate 20th century Trostsky inspired view of France. Ultimately Boring

[pierrebarberis · 2/10 · 25 May 2016]

SO plain and negative on any aspect. The 'Elite' look and feel stupid while the 'workers class' are depicted as ultimately atrocious and ugly human flesh eaters. It's supposed to be a charge creating laughter.

In the theater where I saw it, in Paris, NOT a single smile except for one in the last minute. its definitively boring and so biased that i am ashamed it was selected for Cannes. And as to aggravate the picture the only likable character of the movie is an ambiguous boy/girl illustrating the 'genre' quarrel France that has been nurturing recently.

STAY AWAY definitively> Don't EVEN DOWNLOAD IT FOR FREE

Utter drivel

[arrisake · 1/10 · 8 January 2018]

When neither of the (usually) wonderful Binoche or Luchini can save a film, you know it's a stinker. God knows why they agreed to be in this, it is truly dreadful. I actually felt a bit sorry for some of the actors, I bet they genuinely shudder with embarrassment when thinking back to it, I hope they were well paid enough to provide some comfort.

Don't let the grossness of the situation put you to sleep

[Dr_Coulardeau · 10/10 · 2 July 2016]

Let's fall in the hideous, disgusting, sick and bleak mud of a marshy coastal bay somewhere between Boulogne and Gravelines in France, you know where the refugees are slowly rotting away waiting for a miracle to take them across the Channel.

The action is at the beginning of the 20th century, before the First World War for sure and the first social upheaval in Nord Pas de Calais in 1906 after the mine accident in Courrières that caused a strike that was broken by Clemenceau's supposedly republican army, but after the first anarchistic upheaval in the coal mines at the end of the 19th century so perfectly described by Emile Zola as a call to all capitalist bourgeois to move their consonants around and become paternalist if they don't want to finish burned up at the stake or broken through on the wheel by the emerging Marxists already known as communists.

The film in this no man's land of "Who-Know-Where" concentrates on three sets of people.

First the local sailors just pick mussels from the rocks along the coast but do not have any boats to go fishing out at sea. And in the summer they make some centimes, meaning some pennies, by carrying tourists, vacationers, rich bourgeois from Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing across the bay in their own arms. To improve their starving diet they just kill one or two from time to time to add some meat to their poor regimen. Cannibalism, you will say. But you are wrong about it. It is plain survival of those who have the sharpest teeth.

The big family of textile bourgeois from Tourcoing, is so inbred that we could doubt they are nothing else but a reborn personification of Tutankhamun, the twisted, humpy, sickly descendant of several generation of inbreeding from brother to sister. The master of the family has a hump and walks like a half-crushed beetle. His wife is hardly better though she is apparently coming from a slightly more distant branch, many second removed cousin, though her brother who is maybe brother in law of the head of the family, or maybe just cousin, or maybe nephew, who knows really since it is the same thing anyway, is not brilliant either and is probably slightly autistic. The head of the family and his wife have two daughters and nothing special about them. The sister of the head of the family has a son, Billie, whose father is doubtful and could be either her own brother or their father, meaning the woman when a teenager was used both by the brother and the father of the lot. That son Billie is the most beautiful perversion of incestuous inbreeding. He is a boy who dresses like a girl and at times when he is bored he is a girl who dresses like a boy. He is courting the adult son of the local fishing family, till that son discovers that girl who dresses like a boy is actually a boy.

Add to that the secondary little servants of this rotting society. The priest is innocuous, except that he uses his French language haphazardly. He says "Pêchez en paix!" as if he did not know that may mean both "Fish in peace" or "Sin in peace." The point is he probably means both which is untranslatable in English. The cops, an inflated fat detective, Mr. Machin, meaning, among several dozens of words, "contraption," "doohickey," "gadget," "gizmo," "thingumabob," "thingumajig," "thingummy," "contrivance," and his assistant, definitely fit and slim. And the detective is so full of air that he ends up flying in the sky till some bored soldier shoots the air out of him and makes him descend back onto the surface of the earth. The soldiers are innocuous and valueless except that the colonel at the head of them does not know how to play the bugle he faithfully pretends to sound.

And that's it, plus finger-licking nice choice morsels from human bodies cooked in their own blood. Who wants some more foot? The satire is so thick with innuendo and grossness that you will be grossed out. Full stop, period, end of the game. As for the French they speak it is either some snobbish French or some local Picard dialect, anyway, the one like the other, out of reach of any normal humane and civilized person. Don't you try to understand the two linguos or linguas, or you may end up finding out it is even more disgusting than you may have ever thought. Treat it as the language of the prehistoric animals that came before Homo Sapiens and from which we are "unluckily" descending.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Alive, Alive, O

[writers_reign · 5/10 · 21 June 2017]

The three heavy hittters were the principal draw here and they don't disappoint. Fittingly - they are, after all, aristos of French cinema - they play aristos albeit seriously inbred and the overriding impression calls to mind one of those charity events in yesterday's England when theatrical 'royalty' let its hair down and enjoyed itself -the Coward number Three Juvenile Delinquents comes to mind. Fabrice Luchini is the most outre doing everything but scraping the ground with his knuckles whilst the other two are more nuanced. Throw in a pre-Laurel and Hardy duo - we are talking 1910 - here and we have a sort of Northern bouillabaisse where anything goes. The trick of course is to play it with a straight face which all hands do to a fare-thee-well. Not for everyone.

Love it

[laubons · 9/10 · 24 November 2016]

I just saw it in a festival and a several ladies left before the end. Me, i laughed a lot until tears come to my eyes. You need to really enjoy bizarre movies to like this one. This movie is unusual, funny, rare; the characters are dorky, exaggerated, histrionic, endearing. I can't tell too much without spoilers, but if you like peculiar movies with weird sense of humor, this movie is perfect. Its in the same line of Toni Erdmann but... a little weirder. And Juliette Binoche is awesome here. I loved it but again, it is not for people who don't like stranger things. And I need to complete the ten-lines-review, so I want to say, one more time, if you like weird movies, go for it!

WTF did I just watch?

[born_naughty · 1/10 · 14 June 2016]

Ma Loute is apparently a comedy, or so the information on the website of my cinema told me. I don't think I will ever understand the French's sense of humor. French might be the language of love and romance but it is definitely NOT the language of laughter. Judging on the reactions and faces of my fellow viewers in the theater they agreed with me. All the characters walk weird, talk weird, look weird, stare weird and weird stuff happens out of the blue for no reason. Ma Loute is a very weird and bizarre experience. Nothing wrong with that. Except that there is no method to the madness, no consistency to anything in the entire movie and no coherency to the jokes. All I saw was fat people jokes, dumb people jokes and weird-for-the-sake-of-being-weird people jokes. The only mildly interesting thing about Ma Loute were the two main story lines. All the more infuriating that for most of the movie those story lines are an afterthought. And to no-one's surprise, none of the story lines got any kind of resolution. Avoid at all costs!

So so bad words are missing

[rodicapublic · 1/10 · 5 July 2016]

This movie is so bad that it motivated me to create an account on IMDb and tell other people not to go seeing it. I don't know what happened in the mind of the guy who put this through, but it's an awful result: a particularly boring movie, nothing interesting happens, famous actors just saying their words (how did they accept to do it?!), painful and absolutely not funny scenes, in two words: a cinema disaster! I am so deceived for the French cinema after seeing this, don't know when I'll have the courage to go see another one...not so soon I suppose. If going into details, there is an absence of action in the movie that makes it painful to watch, especially in a cinema: I wanted to get out from there and run after 30 minutes! Then, the very special humor the author wants to share is simply not funny: showing us the specific accent of people in the North of France (presented as something indistinguishable), is supposed to be funny, but it is not, especially when is repeated several times over the movie. Eventually, what is somehow funny is people falling down from a chair or having a car accident, oh my god this is so funny, this gives you an idea about the degree of fun of the movie. Then, the story in itself has too many elements that go right and left and at the center and then again at the center right and left: please understand here that there is no such a story in this movie and more importantly, no interesting story. The general theme of mocking the French bourgeoisie of the beginning of the XXth century could have been a good start for an interesting crazy story if the script and the making of the movie were achieved. Instead, despite some brilliant actor play (Luchini) the result is bullshit.

Beautiful, quirky and strange - I loved it

[OJT · 8/10 · 18 October 2021]

An extremely overweight detective and his way smarter right hand side comes to Slack By in 1910 to investigate why burgoise tourists traceless disappears. Ma Loute is the son of a fisherman which falls in love with one of the tourist - a girl dressed like a boy.

More you don't need to know about "Ma Loute" or "Slack Bay". What appears is a very strange and beautiful movie, which lets the viewer decide weather you find the story appealing or not.

It's the first movie I watch made by Bruno Dumont, and I've now put the rest up on my watchlist.

It's quirky, strange, gross and funny. I thought of Ettore Scolas "Ugly, dirty and bad" and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's films, and maybe with a touch of Wes Anderson.

It certainly will not be everyone's cup of tea, but I love such a gem. I'm not sure what Dumont wants to tell, but it sure is a treat.

Only for French speakers

[SaraW82 · 26 August 2022]

All the humor is lost in translation. If your using subtitles give this one a miss. It seems extremely gory in places. I watch a lot of films from all over the world using subtitles and I honestly can't tell if this one is good or not.

a comedy without humour

[martin-807-452270 · 1/10 · 3 July 2017]

So having had a feast of high budget US feature films recently I thought I should try a cinematic sorbet and went to see French film Slack Bay at the Curzon cinema the other day in London.

******Spoilers****Spoilers****Spoilers****Spoilers****

Now I love comedy, several of my top ten films of all time are comedy, and I've spent quite a lot of time in France over the last 44 years, and I think, I have a very wide understanding and appreciation and knowledge of comedy.

I have also written comedy, performed comedy and directed actors doing comedy.

I would describe Slack Bay as 'Without humour'.

Slack Bay is just a terribly unfunny film. After a mere 15 minutes (it's an excruciating 2 hours and 2 mins) I was anxiously glancing at my watch and wondering if it can really be this bad throughout - but it was!

There are no 'jokes', no clever dialogue, just a little bit of visual humour. One of the main characters has a strange shambling walk, which he does in every scene. He sits in a deckchair and it collapses. But not overtime he sits in a deckchair and the one time he sits in a deckchair and it SHOULD collapse. predictably it doesn't.

It is a film of grotesque but that gives a name and a 'style' to what anyone else would call rubbish. It features unjustified and unpunished cannibalism which is just horrid and not funny or even in keeping with the rest of the film. There's a lot of spitting up close to the camera which is clearly hilarious in the eyes of the 'director' but didn't elicit a titter from me or the audience. There's a lot of homophobia and one of the main characters gets a huge beating for being a boy dressed as a girl dressed as a boy (?) which just felt terribly out of place in a 'comedy'.

So many scenes don't go anywhere and every joke is repeated: When the fat detective walks there is a dubbed on sound of someone rubbing balloons. again and again and again and again and again. The secret of comedy is timing, as we all know and the editor and director just never knew when to cut and when too much was too much.

I was so hoping that this would be the antidote to Hollywood Block Busters that I wanted but it ain't.

Apart from the pretty good wardrobe, and OK cinematography (which in these days of Digital cameras is achievable by children with an iPhone) and the star turn of actress known only as Raph, it is unwatchable pants.

As I considered the varied merits of the film as I left the cinema one of the other cinema goers said to me: "What did you make of that?" I said: "It didn't really work for me, where's the story?" and he said: "It was just a terrible mess" quite.

This film was nominated for an award at the Cannes Film Festival which just goes to show that I really don't know anything.

1 out of 5 without humour.

Beautiful, funny and quite weird

[brunoantunes-63048 · 9/10 · 19 April 2017]

This movie is quite unique, an unlikely mix of social comedy and gender drama. Cinematography is beautiful, even haunting sometimes. The harsh French Northern landscape is wonderful, providing for a previously unseen contrast of deep blue, beige and grey. Slapstick and dark, bizarre humour are equally present. The plot is quite simple. The bourgeoisie is copiously mocked, while the villagers are depicted as brutal yet somehow faithful. The actors are great, specially Binoche and Luchini, all extravagant and whimsical. Unfortunately the soundtrack sounds sometimes inadequate, the emotion coming from the music doesn't seem to fit in with the emotions displayed by the characters and situations. This is only low point for me (or maybe I failed to understand some subtle intention from director Bruno Dumont). Otherwise, it's a brilliant movie and I recommend to all cinema lovers.

Terrible.Do not do it to yourself

[t_timchenko · 2/10 · 12 July 2016]

The worst movie of 2016 for me. Stay away. I like European movies. I love French cinema. And I liked Valeria Bruni Tedeschi in "Un château en Italie" and in "Ah! Si j'étais riche". Actually I went to see her perform. I was disappointed in her performance and in the movie itself. I was expecting something unusual, unorthodox and quirky but at the same time pleasant and light. But this is beyond my expectations.This movie is terrible and disgusting, not funny at all and leaving an aftertaste. I understand the metaphors and allusions, but this is just disgusting execution.

There were 5 people in the movie theater at the beginning of the movie and 3 people stayed till the end (I was one of them). Why did I do it to myself? I should have left at the beginning.

Good camera work, but

[evuraan · 1/10 · 14 September 2018]

Started interesting, but then it turned out to be a waste of time.

Bizarre Film

[derek-duerden · 8/10 · 10 February 2021]

I've not seen any other films by Bruno Dumont, so I don't know how typical this is, but it's the strangest film I've seen for a while.

Whether one finds it funny or not I guess will be down to personal taste, but mostly I found the quiet humour to be appropriate to the style, with only Binoche's over-the-top performance striking a jarring note. Many of the cast (the fat detective in particular) were clearly having a great time, and the mix of serious issues and disparate characters worked well for me.

The cinematography was also great and, although there were many loose ends and perhaps 20-30 minutes too much in the running time, there was enough plot and a fairly satisfying resolution. Just go with it.

A ghastly experience, I wish I had time to claim for damages...

[christophechaplet · 2/10 · 3 July 2016]

"Ma Loute" is a film but what it really is is theft and abjection, it is the result of the cultural misery and of the intellectual mischief and vacuity taking place in an era where history is at a standstill. This film is yet another proof of the power of the media and marketing upon the brain washed masses of consenting slaves and consumers in the new world order. When thousands of minorities are actually the overwhelming majority of the human population on this planet, when less than one percent of the population owns more than 99 % of the assets, when futures and junk bonds, « Sex and the city » and publicity are the pinnacle and ultimate goal and purpose of the whole circus, it is time for terrorism, incest, « gender  debate», gluten free diet or cannibalism to justify yet another reason to go on as usual. In this particular instance what is somewhat interesting in this display of ridicule and emptiness is to wonder about the motives of the producers and of the distributors of such utter despicable lack of respect for the public and past authors. The only explanation, the only way to read this film is, I presume, to comprehend it as a form of fascist propaganda. The director intends to depict a decadent society at the beginning of the 20th century in France where the poor and the rich conjure in their respective and shared perversity and degeneration, doing so the authors of this project wish to confront us with the mirror of our own abyssal dismay and uncertainties about post-Christian western civilization. Cannibalism being the least horrific detail here, incest is worse, not because of the sufferings of the victims ( Binoche makes her worst performance in vain) or because of degenerate off-springs, but because it is assumed as an acceptable fact of life and a normal process within social classes. All the same there are too many signs throughout the film that both the director and the main actors are really desperate to obtain cultural status and recognition in order to please heavily subsidized institutions and their privileged public. The result is a crime: theft, theft of the work of Chekov. Over the last forty years there have been so many theatre productions of Chekov in France that it has become some kind of redemption or absolution for all the sins and poor invention of the cultural elites and their subordinates, this film is much less than yet another one of those, it is hardly a fart. Towards the end, the film shows a certain inspector Machin shot down for inflating himself a little too much...very enlightening... the film blows itself up too. Terrorists do the same sometimes, I can't help wondering why they go on doing it.

Either you love it or hate it !

[lucienm-60321 · 8/10 · 1 January 2022]

Only French can do a movie like this !

Cast is brilliant !

It's a dark comedy, quite absurd and... very different !

The locations are a magnificent part of France !

Mr. Jourdain made a movie. His peers will like it.

[voyou-703-655350 · 3/10 · 17 August 2022]

The writing is atrocious, unimaginative, inconclusive, all over the place, uneducated, unfunny, schlock and whatnot.

The acting is atrocious. All the literate adults are mentally and often physically deficient (nearly as much the former as our illiterate IMDb censors/parasites.) For the lolz that never come. The cast portray them as ridiculously as humanly possible, way beyond over-the-top. Not to mention they are inarticulate and often unintelligible.

The pace and the tone are atrocious. Half the scenes are filler, repeated ad nauseam. Obviously, boring. Most the dialogue consist of the ramblings of airheads. Obviously, boring.

The humour is atrocious. The film clearly tries to be a comedy, yet its few gags were old in 1910. The director reiterates them ad nauseam as well. Whoever dozes off (expectedly most viewers) will still enjoy them not.

Three points for the pretty pictures (costumes, machines, period sets,) and for a promising young actress who played her cards right.

Disturbing

[LKazan · 5/10 · 27 October 2016]

I happened to be on the site at the time of the shooting. So, I looked forward to seeing the produced work. Enormous was my disappointment, up to revulsion, and nevertheless that film that I still dislike keeps haunting me. The French press in its large majority covered with praise - speaking even about poetry - what for me stays as a nauseating demonstration by the absurd, the grotesque and the vulgar. All the professional actors contributing to the ludicrous by a voluntarily excessive overplay, up to the point of raising extreme annoyance, such as throughout the galloping hysteria of the character played by Juliette Binoche. At the heart of the exceptional beauty of Côte d'Opale - however watered down by the cinematography -, all characters are grotesque to the excess: the painting of a degenerate humanity, from the fishermen's poor family of mussels pickers poured into cannibalism, up to the microcosm of a bourgeois family enriched by the textile industry. ... Every character but one, about whom for quite some time one can not help wandering whether she is a girl disguised as boy or whether he is a boy disguised as girl. A sensitive character in such ambiguity, till nowadays a pariah through ages... Maybe that was the message intended by the director, how could we know?