Slack Bay

What­ev­er hap­pened to Bruno Dumont? After sev­en films that estab­lished his rep­u­ta­tion as one of the most uncom­pro­mis­ing and provoca­tive film­mak­ers on the art­house cir­cuit, his 2014 minis­eries P’tit Quin­quin was a bewil­der­ing change of pace. It still looked and felt like a Dumont film, but the dour tone of his pre­vi­ous work had shift­ed into a lighter mode, and he dis­played an unex­pect­ed gift for eccen­tric comedy.

P’tit Quin­quin was some­thing tru­ly unique, a film that seemed to act as both a par­o­dy of his own ultra-seri­ous work and an ambi­tious attempt to explore his usu­al themes in a fresh way.

But if you thought Dumont would revert to type after scratch­ing his com­ic itch, think again. Slack Bay is pure slap­stick. The tone is set ear­ly on with the appear­ance of two detec­tives, played by Didi­er Després and Cyril Rigaux, who bear an uncan­ny resem­blance to Lau­rel and Hardy. The gap-toothed Després is so cor­pu­lent his every move­ment prompts squeaky sound effects, as if his joints are strain­ing under pres­sure. And Dumont clear­ly recog­nis­es the time-hon­oured com­ic val­ue of a fat man falling over – Després spends much of the film tum­bling down sand dunes with his wide-eyed col­league scam­per­ing after him.

If this makes you laugh then set­tle in and enjoy the ride, because there’s plen­ty more where that came from. The film is almost 90 min­utes short­er than P’tit Quin­quin but it feels twice as full, with Dumont pack­ing in as much weird­ness as pos­si­ble and push­ing his actors to give the most over-the-top and car­toon­ish turns they can muster. Juli­ette Binoche sweeps into the pic­ture as a shriek­ing, haughty grande dame (a mil­lion miles from Camille Claudel 1915, her pre­vi­ous col­lab­o­ra­tion with Dumont).

Mean­while a hunch­backed Fab­rice Luchi­ni shuf­fles along behind her, mut­ter­ing in a monot­o­ne drawl, and Vale­ria Bruni Tedeschi fran­ti­cal­ly makes sure every­thing is in its right place as Luchini’s wife. It’s an unusu­al­ly star­ry cast for Dumont, but he uses them pur­pose­ful­ly. These famil­iar faces play the self-absorbed, snob­bish and con­de­scend­ing Van Peteghem clan, which has descend­ed on this north­ern sea­side resort for their annu­al holiday.

The rest of the ensem­ble con­sists of Dumont’s usu­al col­lec­tion of non-pro­fes­sion­al actors, drawn from the local envi­rons and cast for their dis­tinc­tive looks and odd tics, which cre­ates a clear class divide among the char­ac­ters that works in the film’s favour. The mys­te­ri­ous dis­ap­pear­ances of tourists is the result of the work­ing class Bru­fort fam­i­ly killing and eat­ing these upper-class interlopers.

Yes, even in Dumont’s lat­er, fun­ny ones there is no short­age of peo­ple being butchered, and Slack Bay’s tonal shifts, skil­ful­ly bal­anced over P’tit Quinquin’s four episodes, can some­times be whiplash-induc­ing here. Aside from the prat­falls and the dis­mem­ber­ment, there’s a sur­pris­ing­ly ten­der romance between Binoche’s gen­der-swap­ping off­spring Bil­lie (played a by a strik­ing new­com­er named Raph) and the eldest son Ma Loute (Bran­don Lavieville), but that strand of the film ulti­mate­ly takes a jar­ring­ly bru­tal detour too.

Dumont just can’t help him­self. Maybe he hasn’t changed that much after all? But when he is mak­ing films as sin­gu­lar, absurd and inspired as this, it’s easy to for­give the occa­sion­al misstep.