2016 Cannes Critics’ Panel Day 3: Bruno Dumont’s “Slack Bay” Sinks & Swims

Day three and four films and so far it’s been a sturdy festival line-up. Excluding his mini-series P’tit Quinquin which shored up at the Directors’ Fortnight in 2014, his eighth feature film and fourth time on the Croisette, Slack Bay otherwise known as Ma Loute represents a slight departure for the filmmaker. He got noticed in ’96 for his Camera d’Or winning La vie de Jésus (Directors’ Fortnight) and has hit the Comp a total of three times: 1999’s L’humanité (Grand Prix and a double Best Performance prize for his non-professional actors) and once again Grand Prix winner for 2006’s Flandres. Variety’s Peter Debruge says it “feels both more and less like a movie than anything the misanthropic filmmaker has done before” and The Hollywood Reporter’s Tood McCarthy says future auds might be taken aback, claiming it is “more weirdly fascinating than genuinely good, this beautifully made, bracingly eccentric and often arch film will generate a measure of strong support but will bewilder more than entrance most traditional art-house regulars.” We’ll be taking in more grades before we truly know whether this film sinks……or swims.

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