Croisette High Tide: Dumont’s “Slack Bay” Disappears into Kino Lorber Slate

Not to be outdone by SPC and IFC (they just nabbed films Mungiu’s Graduation and the Dardenne’s The Unknown Girl), it pays to have longstanding relationship with world renowned auteurs and Richard Lorber can attest to this with his preemptive pick-up of Bruno Dumont’s latest. Starring Fabrice Luchini, Juliette Binoche and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, known as “Ma Louche” to French auds and Slack Bay internationally, Dumont has competed in the Main Comp twice and walked away with the Grand Prix award on both occasions: L’humanité (1999) and Flandres (2006).

Gist: Set in 1910 on the northern French Coast, where several tourists have vanished while relaxing on the beaches. Police inspectors soon realize that the epicenter of these mysterious disappearances must be Slack Bay, where the Slack River and the sea join at high tide and a small community of fishermen and oyster farmers live — among them, the Bréfort ferrymen, led by a patriarch nicknamed “The Eternal.”

Worth Noting: Lorber has distributed Life of Jesus, Humanité, Flanders, Camille Claudel 1915 and last year’s miniseries, L’il Quinquin.

Do We Care?: Pleasantly surprised, and perhaps ill prepared by the tonal shift in L’il Quinquin (read our review),  Dumont certainly veers into high-end dramedy with this reunion with his Camille Claudel 1915 starlet.