Slack Bay

2017, 122 minutes, DCP
France

Director: Bruno Dumont

Cast: Juliette Binoche Fabrice Luchini Valeria Bruni Tedeschi

Distributor: Kino Lorber

The bourgeois and extremely eccentric Van Peteghem family—among them Juliette Binoche, Fabrice Luchini, and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi—have settled in for another summer at their cliff-top villa overlooking the picturesque Slack Bay. Their leisurely rhythm of sunbathing and seaside constitutionals is soon interrupted by the arrival of two bumbling inspectors investigating a string of tourists gone missing (and serving full-on Keystone Kops). As the macabre mysteries mount and love blossoms between the family’s genderqueer teen and the son of a local fisherman, Binoche and company ratchet the slapstick up to eleven. It’s no wonder director Bruno Dumont (Li’l Quinquin, Camille Claudel 1915) cites Peter Sellers, Monty Python, and Laurel and Hardy as cinematic influences for his delightful foray into winking, absurdist farce.
(Kino Lorber)

“Suggests Buñuel’s L’Age d’Or by way of Godard’s Weekend… Dumont’s most polished work.”
—Eric Kohn, Indiewire

“The boldest and freest of recent genre mashups. Raises conflicts of class, character, and gender into off-kilter legend.”
—Richard Brody, The New Yorker