Bruno Dumont is set to continue his fixation for the nineteen-tens as Screen Daily has confirmed that filmmaker will indeed reteam with his Camille Claudel 1915 thesp Juliette Binoche on his eighth feature film. Fabrice Luchini and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi will also star in Slack Bay (Ma Loute), which is due to shoot this summer in northern France (here is a pic of the spatial lieu). Memento Films International will be selling the project in Cannes next month. It’ll likely be among the Cannes contenders for the following year.
Gist: Set in 1910, this unfolds against the backdrop of an area along the northern French coast known as La Slack , after a local river that only flows into the sea at high tide. Following the mysterious disappearance of several tourists as they relax on the bay’s beautiful beaches, famous inspectors Machin and Malfoy are called in to investigate. Their enquiries bring them in to contact with two families from opposite sides of the social spectrum: the troublemaking Bréfort ferrymen clan, led by a patriarch nicknamed “The Eternal”, and the Van Peteghems (Binoche), a decadent, bourgeois family who spend every summer in their imposing holiday mansion overlooking the bay. When the Bréforts’ most boisterous son Ma Loute and the Van Peteghem’s mischievous daughter Billie embark on a peculiar love story, the lives of both families are unexpectedly shaken to the core.
Worth Noting: Luchini and Binoche starred in Cédric Klapisch’s Paris.
Do We Care?: Following in the path of Li’l Quinquin which our Nicholas Bell called “another unique film from Dumont, whose knack for comedy is as delightfully off center as his more dramatic entries,” Dumont will be flexing his comedic (noir) muscles once again.
