christopher-underwood This started fairly well and looked like it would be very amusing and for some I know it is. For me though, the characters begin to get rather irritating and by the end really annoying. It seems incomprehensible that any of them would carry on the way they do. 'Carry On', is just about the right expression, too. Director Blanc, who plays the excruciating fat man who thinks his middle aged wife is off with everybody, waffles away in the accompanying 'featurette', seemingly unaware that he has produced something akin to the infamous English series and thinks he's Eisenstein instead. Yes, pretentious is another word that comes to mind, and even if this is based upon an English book and has some elements of the worst of this country's yob/snobby business it is in the end a very French movie. We may overrate our silly soap operas but only the French would consider them 'significant'.

The Movie Man Carry on Conking!Summer things of course is a naughty metaphor for what people get up to on their annual holidays; in France it's a sport so it seems as just about every sexual mix and coupling is explored in this enjoyable and 'Carry On' style French farce, although they have neatly exchanged the nudity for suggestion. A thoughtOne in four couples apparently spilt up on Valentines Day ever year and it's a similar ratio for first time young lovers on their summer vacation because the pressure to perform romantically is often the final straw of not living up to those passionate expectations.It's the turn of five French couples, interconnected by three Parisian families, escaping the traditional august exodus from the capital, to see how their relationships fair on their annual summer holiday. Right from the opening snazzy credits and quirky French pop tune you know this is not going to be a predictable and serious French relationship, mood drama, but something much more fun and frivolous with a premier French cast to boot.The storyAffluent middle aged couple, Bernard (Jacques Dutronc) and Marianna (Charlotte Rampling) have booked a week in the exclusive Westminster hotel on the South of France for their escape from the bustle of tourist riddled Paris. Bernard's star employee at the family estate agency is Kevin (Sammy Bouajilla) who is secretly screwing the bosses bitchy, unlikeable, but sexy tear away daughter in Emily (Lula Dubois) with the two furtively meeting up together on Emily's Chicago break.At the last minute Bernard decides not to go away with his wife under the excuse of urgent business at home as the couples meet to decide the travel plans. Best friends to Bernard and Marianna are Jerome (Denis Podayudos) and Vera Salois (Kerina Viard) who are also coming to the same resort.Vera is a bit of a jealous snob and has made her husband book a week at the Westminster, way above her embattled husbands salary and current career prospects. He has had to sell the family car to pay for it and hasn't done what his wife has asked him and instead has seriously compromised their social standing as the couple and their cute young son Loic (Gerrald Ullier) pull up at a caravan park in a battered replacement jalopy.On arrival at the resort we meet the third couple in the obsessive hair dresser in Jean Pier and his beautiful lawyer wife in Julie (Claudette Cloran).He cant bare being apart from her and suspicious of every man that even talks to Julie, with hotel romeo in Romaine (Mathieu Bodynae) being this weeks number one suspect. Completing the line up is attractive single mom, Lulu (Carla Banquet), the niece of the Salois family who off-loads her baby on the gleeful Vera who is quickly tiring of caravan life. In return for looking after the kid for the week, Loic goes to stay with the ever calculating Marianna for his coming of age experience with Lulu free to explore the remaining male population.For Bernard, the cats away and the mice will play, be it with his hermaphrodite home help or the younger woman close to them that we assume Marianna doesn't know about. At the hotel its bed hoping galore with Lothario Romaine filling the vacuum and vacant holes, providing the gumption for the frolics and the momentum to the complex relationships as we slowly discover the skeletons in the closet that hold this fragile group of promiscuous friends and family together. The quote;Jean Piere:"It's not easy living with a nymph"Jerome;"You should try living with the opposite".The thinking on it...It's a refreshing change to see a French film on the subjects of love and romance not taking themselves too seriously for once. This is positively swimming with joi de vive and jealousy with the superb super tolerant and soothe saying Charlotte Rampling and her immaculate French at the heart of it. It a story about those scheming women that leach of men and eventually bring them down when their accrued social status is threatened; better not to expose your husbands affair until you are guaranteed the house and the car. This can usually be identified when the husband's hairline has receded more than his salary.This is excellent stuff as the subtitles for once dissolve into an insignificant distraction for once as we are enveloped into the frolics and comedy with some cracking writing in this brisk and talky 90 minutes. OK there's some dodgy dubbing and sizable chunks of continuity missing that appear in the deleted scenes but on the whole this is quality stuff and you stay with the flow. Its also the first DVD I've had where you can rewind and still see the subtitles so you know where to stop when you missed a bit.AdditionalsThere's a directors making off with a different slant on it as he gives you a video diary on his experiences on set and with the actors(very French).Some trailers and film biographies complete the minimal extras to an enjoyable foreign film DVD.

writers_reign Michel Blance, arguably best known outside France for his eponymous Monsiour Hire does an Agnes Jaoui here and takes a principal role as well as directing. It doesn't pretend to be anything but light escapist fare and as such it's reasonably successful. For some reason directors keep on casting that non-actress par excellence Charlotte Rampling who's ruined as many GOOD films as Peter Greenaway has made BAD ones - in each case every one they've made - and once again she lets the side down whilst in a wonderful touch of irony she shares a 'moment' with that other total loss Gaspard Ulliel (it was a nice if slightly bizarre touch that the Cesars awarded him a Best Newcomer gong last Saturday for A Very Long Engagement, despite his having been in this and Les Egares). Elsewhere there are some REAL talents on display not least Carole Bouquet, Karin Viard and Denis Podalydes. It's all done and dusted inside a week centered on a joint vacation in Le Touquet and Blanc keeps an extended family on its toes not to say mattresses. If you've got 90 minutes or so between planes and a portable DVD player this is as good as any to beguile the wait.

Insp. Clouzot As with "Grosse Fatigue" the pair Michel Blanc / Carole Bouquet is at the center of the film. Lots of laughs. Subtle. Interesting characters even if sometimes it could be more subtle (eg : Michel Blanc's character is really extreme).Pour passer une bonne soiree.