I was aware of the film’s background/story and was perfectly content to enjoy the bizarre, over-the-top, ridiculous romp that this film would undoubtedly be…
I wasn’t even put off by the postcard reviews on the entrance staircase that the Watershed encourages from its audience. These are just four of them: “Strange… very odd, macabre and funny”; “I hated it”; “One of the worst films I’ve ever seen” and “Funny, bizarre and clever”!
I’ll try to outline the plot… albeit very briefly! Postcard-perfect seaside village in northern France in 1910… there’s a working class family (the Bruforts) – a lowly clan of fishermen (who also double as ferrymen to either row or CARRY people across the low waters that surround the dunes; there are the upper-class Van Peteghems, vacating for the summer; and there are two detectives investigating unsolved and mysterious disappearances. These detectives are played (literally) in the guise of Laurel and Hardy characters – one huge and one very slight individual, dressed in black suits and bowler hats.
I’m
really not a great lover of slap-stick humour, but I REALLY enjoyed this film
(and so, it seemed, did the rest of the audience)… wonderful timing, ludicrous
incidents, complete and utter over-acting by all the adult members of the Van
Peteghem family (I thought Fabrice Luchini was superb) and an absolutely ridiculous,
exaggerated plot – which included good old-fashioned cannibalism plus a measure
of gender-bending identity crises!! Don’t ask!
If I had
one minor criticism, it would be its length (122 minutes)… I think it could
have been 20 minutes shorter and still just as funny/crisp.The film is theatrically extravagant and, at times, almost Pythonesque… and I know it won’t be everyone’s ‘cup of tea’, but I loved it (and laughed out loud on several occasions – sorry!).
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