In French with Slovene subtitles.
Pastoral comedy set in France’s belle epoque. Ensemble cast stars Juliette Binoche, Fabrice Luchini and Valerie Bruni-Tedeschi.
Summer 1910. Several tourists have vanished while relaxing on the beautiful beaches of the Channel Coast. Infamous inspectors Machin and Malfoy soon gather that the epicenter of these mysterious disappearances must be Slack Bay, a unique site where the Slack River and the sea join at high tide. Among the small community of fishermen evolves a curious family, the Brufort, led by the father nicknamed "The Eternal", who rules as best as he can on his bunch of sons, especially the impetuous teenager Ma Loute. Towering high above the bay stands the van Peteghems’ mansion. Every summer, this bourgeois family stagnates in the villa. Over the course of five days, as starts a peculiar love story between the young lovers from the two families, confusion and mystification descend on the idyllic village.
"Unlike Li’l Quinquin, which I wrote without knowing if it would be clearly funny, I was now aware of what I was doing, of the comic power of the situations I was thinking up. Comedy supposes a machinery, a mechanism of immediate effectiveness; it is less incantatory and is different to drama, and thus more difficult to create." (Bruno Dumont)
Bruno Dumont
Born in 1958 in Bailleul, far north of France, Dumont embarked on his filmmaking career in 1986. Preferring to set his films in the natural setting of his native Normandy, he has directed numerous TV commercials, shorts and feature films. Humanity and Flanders won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes and the L'il Quinquin series several film critics’ awards.