Slack Bay

Juliette Binoche, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Fabrice Luchini mix it up for laughs in the latest Cannes entry from Bruno Dumont, a filmmaker continuing to trade his former heavyweight formalism for the absurdity and slapstick he revelled in with the great Li’l Quinquin. Breezily mining the class divide for bizarro comedy, Dumont sets his new film on the Channel Coast in the Summer of 1910, where Luchini’s barmy patriarch and his wife (Bruni Tedeschi) vacation with her flamboyant sister (Binoche) and the latter’s wild, cross-dressing daughter (mononymic newcomer Raph). With a cast of local farmers on the seaside below, Slack Bay delights with its Chaplinesque humour, witty dialogue, gender-bending identity crises and a dash of old-fashioned cannibalism thrown in for good measure. (Sharmill Films)