La Baule-les-Pins

I have seen this movie on the German TV yesterday with the title: "A summer at the sea" and I was deeply impressed.

Despite that it was produced in 1990, the theme is more up-to-date than ever. Excellent actors of all ages performed very well indeed, a great story, some romantic spots and lovely music will make you thinking about the relationship of children to their parents, their pain and childish emotions which often get hurt.

This story could happen today, next month or the following year, next door of you or at any other location or country. So you will get nothing NEW out of that movie but the sad reality of daily life in the eyes of children whose parents can't behave.

I only can highly recommend this movie - buy the DVD and you will enjoy it definitively more than just one time.

The French seem to have a talent for making a completely believable sense of time and place in films. And characters. A lot of French movies feel less like standard films than time capsules perfectly preserved. It is so easy to believe what you're seeing is real, or that what you're watching actually happened.

These movies, perhaps as a corollary, often leave much semblance of plot behind in the pursuit of realism, and that's fine. It makes a welcome change from plot-driven Hollywood films.

However, this can be an issue at times, such as when a movie needs a resolution. "C'est La Vie" is an example. The movie feels so real that a climax seems overtly stagey anyway, but here it's also surprisingly depressing. And it seems to come out of nowhere. The depressing ending isn't foreshadowed at all, so it's a slap in the face, and almost made me angry.

I enjoyed the movie for most of it, though. It's about two girls, twelve and eight, who go away for a holiday to the seaside in 1958. The older girl has a puppy-love romance develop with a boy, while cracks become more apparent in their parents' relationship.

The parents didn't evince much sympathy from me. I wish the focus had been on the kids more. Possibly, then, seeing the failure of their parents' relationship through their eyes, would have prepared us for the conclusion, making the ending sad and poignant rather than depressing and bewildering.

The only good part is the perspective of the kids. Diane Kurys.has an eye for cinematography, and mostly kids.

For the rest, she better directed some TV-series or alike. She knows the business, though this movie looks wooden, lacks depth. Rather on the shallow side, early evening before prime time.

This movie looks like being done by some good handy-man; and yet not really artistically.

The narration of a summer vacation of two children, whose mother has decided to leave her husband, and instead mingle with a much younger artist. This relationship lacks any visible chemistry, except that both seem to have been cast.

There's a bit of overdone comedy by the landlord. The to-be-left husband, though played pretty well, doesn't get to develop this role. When the little one leaps into his arms, it is plainly visible that she does because she was told to.

The good, and likewise sad, part is the display of the interacting among the children, their difficulties in coping with the situation, their personal development while the separation of the couple develops further, and becomes more and more obvious.

I just can't understand why anyone would be willing to have spent all the time, effort, and money it takes to make a film on something like this. It really takes a lot of effort to make a movie. More than a few people in this world felt passionately enough about this thing to write it, direct it, shoot it, rehearse it, finance it, etc, etc. My god! It's not that it's really bad or anything, there just doesn't seem to be any point in it existing. It's a boring movie about everyday people doing everyday crap. Sometimes they hang out at the beach. Sometimes they bicker. There's some kissing. Why? Why not just do nothing instead?

At first, I thought this was a sequel to Entre Nous. Many of the same people who made one film made another, they are supposedly written by and about the same people and the character names are repeated. However, those playing the roles are NOT the same (although Jean-Pierre Bacri stars in BOTH films but plays totally different roles). Because of this, some viewers might be VERY disappointed. It reminded me of the movie A Christmas Story. There was a little-known sequel named Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss that had NONE of the original characters or charm--and because of this it was soon forgotten. Now the only difference I see is that both these French films are about equally good. Apart from the many differences mentioned above, this film doesn't seem to have a negative view of men (in Entre Nous, the male leads were all Neanderthals), but portrays the mother in the story as a self-absorbed woman whose kids seemed to be an afterthought--her new boy-toy was about 90% of her focus. Because of this, individuals who watch this film AND have issues with a neglecting mother should think twice before watching--you MAY find this film kicks up a lot of feelings.