Slack Bay

Once a chronicler of misery, alienation, and violence in rural France, filmmaker Bruno Dumont has since become a director of odd comedies with dark edges. Slack Bay is set in 1910 on the coast of France, where the eccentric and wealthy Van Peteghem family arrives to spend the summer in their vacation beach manor, and the local Brufort family gets by providing transportation for the tourists through the marshes and across the bay. While the condescending Van Peteghem adults maintain their distance from the locals, teenagers Billie Van Peteghem and Ma Loute Brufort start seeing one another, much to the alarm of Billie's melodramatic mother. Meanwhile, a pair of bumbling comic cops investigate the disappearance of tourists. Dumont casts major French stars as the Van Peteghem adults—Fabrice Luchini as the hunchback father, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi as his nervous hysterical mother, and Juliette Binoche as his flighty sister (Billie's mother), all playing their roles in big, broad performances—and non-actors as the locals in order to create contrast, and he directs with a sense of whimsy, only becoming serious when the story explores the relationship between the teenage characters. But the film eventually brings in cannibalism, incest, and characters who float in the air like giant balloons (all without backstory or explanation). It's all very strange, surreal, and whimsical, but the mix of dark themes and goofy humor may prove too offbeat for some viewers. A strong optional purchase. (S. Axmaker)