Cannes 2016: ‘Slack Bay’ review (Ma Loute)

Slack Bay review: Bruno Dumont’s completely bonkers French comedy, local title Ma Loute, swings into Cannes.

Here’s our Slack Bay review. The film was screened before us as part of this year’s official selection at Cannes 2016.

Where to begin with filmmaker Bruno Dumont‘s weird and totally bonkers 2016 Cannes entry? We’ll begin with a rough outline of the story. It is 1910 on the northern coast of France, an area where groups of holidaymakers in the area have mysteriously gone missing over a number of years. Investigating this anomaly are two Laurel and Hardy-esque (in appearance and their slapstick comedic behaviour) Machin and Malfoy, a couple of larger-than-life clowns who have narrowed down the area to Slack Bay, a beachy terrain where both high society and the working class fishermen interact.

A slightly strange family, the the Bréforts, a group of ferrymen, reside in the bay. They are headed up by a patriarch nicknamed ‘The Eternal’, who carries the higher classes across the water-logged, muddy terrains on a daily basis with his 18-year-old son Ma Loute. On this particular summer, over the course of five days, both the the Bréforts and the holidaying Van Peteghems, a family of inbred aristocrats, are united when Ma Loute develops a love interest in one of the younger members of their clan.

It has taken me many hours since leaving the screening of Slack Bay (Ma Loute) earlier today to comprehend, understand and digest what I had witnessed. As I briefly mentioned, writer and director Dumont has crafted a very off-beat, very niche dark, bloody cannibalistic, screwball comedy that baffles more often than not, dwelling far too long on the barking nature of the many eccentric characters that he has created. The story is relatively simple; as mentioned above, a bunch of holiday makers have gone missing and these two cartoon-like buffoons have been tasked with finding out what has happened – without much resolution even as the crimes which they are looking into continue to take place around them. Sprinkled in the mix to annoy us for two hours are a breed of hugely awful characters who annoy and fall over repeatedly for a large proportion of the film’s running time.

Sure, there are some great performances from the likes of Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Cannes Dame Juliette Binoche, and particularly Fabrice Luchini, whose hump-backed, swaggering toff André Van Peteghem is a particular highlight. The film also looks fantastic, and Director of Photography Guillaume Deffontaines creates a wonderful depiction of the overcast beaches of northern France during the early part of the 20th century.

I struggled throughout entire film, most of it completely lost on me, though I must say the audience seemed to favour it, and the film received a rapturous applause from a beaming crowd in the Palais des Festvals.

I guess it just wasn’t for me.

Slack Bay review by Paul Heath, May 2016.

Slack Bay was reviewed at the Cannes Film Festival, 2016.

Catch all of our Cannes ’16 coverage here