SLACK BAY/ MA LOUTE
France, 2016, 122 minutes, Colour.
Fabrice Lucchini, Juliette Binoche, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Jean- Luc Vincent, Brandon Lavieville, Raph, Didier Despres, Cyril Rigaux, Laura Dupre, Thierry Laviedille, Caroline Carbonier.
Directed by Bruno Dumont.
Slack Bay was screened in competition in Cannes 2016. It has been written and directed by the prestigious director, Bruno Dumont ( L’Humanite?, 29 Palms, Flanders, Camille Claudel).
But this film is nothing like his other films – and one is led to wonder what he was intending.
The setting is the Northwest French coast, on the river Slack where it reaches the Atlantic. Many of the locals fish for their living, especially collecting mussels from the rocks and charging 20 centimes to carry people across the estuary.
On the other hand, rich French families from as far away as Lille come to the coast for the summer holidays building expensive mansions.
In 1910, we see the mussel gatherers at work on the rocks as well as their poor conditions at home, parents and four sons, the oldest of whom is called Ma Loute and give his name to the title of the film – though it is not clear why there should be a particular focus on him rather than other characters. The English title of Slack Bay is probably more effective.
Then we see a wealthy family arriving, beautifully dressed, mannered, and we begin to see a less than discreet picture of the charm of the bourgeoisie. (And one wonders what Bunuel would have made of this story in comparison with Dumont’s version)
The other elements of the story is that several visitors to the coast have disappeared, leaving behind some relics like an umbrella. It soon emerges that the poor family have been killing off the visitors – and dragging them home, putting them in a pot, and enjoying cannibal meals, with a particularly grotesque scene where the mother lifts up a foot and asks whether any of the family would like seconds… Which means that the working class are presented as cannibalistic fools.
But the presentation of the family is worse. they are all extremely mannered in gait, accent, with the audience discovering that they are inbred with a history of incest. With their stilted ways, their arrogant treatment of servants, they are quite dislikeable.
Having an investigation from the local police has an extraordinarily large and ever-inflating inspector with a small moustachioed assistant, in 1910, a French version of Laurel and Hardy in their investigations and in their manner of dealing with each other, especially with the fat man continually falling over and having to be pulled up.
One of the features of the film is that practically everybody in the cast falls over at least once, a film full of pratfalls. The difficulty is that a lot of the comedy, physical comedy, may appeal to a French sensibility but, with each repetition, is lost on an international audience.
The husband-and-wife who own the mansion are played by Fabrice Lucchini, momentarily unrecognisable, with a stoop and hunchback and a strange walk as well is way of expressing himself, often confused. His wife is played more straightforwardly by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. They have two daughters and a cousin is visiting, a person who likes to dress as a girl but is a boy and when dressed as a boy claims to be a girl – and, it emerges, is the product of incest.
Then the child’s mother arrives, over-theatrical, lavishly dressed, declaiming all over the place, screeching, snobbish, dominating the company – a most strange performance by Juliette Binoche (and it would be interesting to hear her views on her interpretation of the character and doing some inexplicable things that the director was asking of her). Her brother turns up, another eccentric bore.
There are all kinds of ups and downs, a rescue boat going out for the peasants’ son and the ambiguous child, a romance between the two and then his disillusionment about his/her identity. in the meantime, Ma Loute is also romantically involved with the made the mansion, continually being corrected, but aware of the lifestyle of the peasants.
The film becomes more and more surreal, especially with some levitations and flights.
By this stage, a devoted audience would be following the film, appreciating the bizarre aspects, the absurd aspects, and seeing it as satirically poetic. Which it probably is in some ways. But the previously very serious Dumont does not communicate well the satiric comic aspects so that many an audience will be puzzling as to what he is doing and why he has done it.
