La Baule-les-Pins

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?

(1990) C'est La Vie/ La Baule-les-Pins (In French with English subtitles) DRAMA/ COMEDY

Co-produced, co-written and directed by Diane Kurys that has young girl turning 13, feeling the effects of her parents divorce while going on a beach vacation! While she narrates some of the story, her parents side of things are also shown at the same time, in a non-resolution kind of way! After my second viewing, since the first time I saw this flick, I was only a little kid and was interested in watching 'foreign films', except that it didn't appeal to me as much as right now. Written and directed by Diane Kurys that sometimes appear to be sort of an autobiography of her own life.

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.

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 is a very typically French slice of late Fifties middle-class life as seen during summer at the seaside when the parents' marriage is breaking up. The looks, the behavior, the attitudes could only be French. In that sense the film has a certain fascination and, hopefully, period accuracy (it's set in 1958).

The subtext is that for a young teenage girl in a sociable world, with a sister and brothers and a pleasant uncle and aunt and an annoying nanny and a young boy interested in kissing her and a close relationship with the imaginary addressee of her daily diary, her parents' disintegrating marriage is by no means the only thing going on in her world--especially given the fact that she's at a summer resort in a rented house and the mother is often away and the father is almost always away. There is a lot going on, most notably the changes in herself. This is probably the film's and Kurys' real subject--only it's a difficult one to put across and she doesn't quite succeed. Ultimtely too much is nonetheless going on, and it is all given too similar weight. Kurys, perhaps in her effort to balance autobiography with history and sociology, winds up making neither the adult nor the children's point of view strong enough. Lindon, Bruni-Tedeschi, Bacri, Berry, and Baye have been in better films. However, they're interesting actors, and the child actors are equally fine. This is not as bad or as great as some have suggested. It's very watchable, but it doesn't really go anywhere.Not a disaster, and a sincere effort, but not successful storytelling and not finally a very memorable experience.