A French sex comedy lighter than a soufflé
Written: Jun 16 '06 (Updated Jun 25 '06)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: the Gallic charm of the cast
Cons: sex not being punished is a con for some; the Bollywood-like pair of musical numbers
The Bottom Line: if a movie can be "glib," this one is
|
|
|
| Stephen_Murray's Full Review: Cote d'Azur (Crustaces & Coquillages) |
The French title for the 2005 movie directed by Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau (The Adventures of Felix, My Life on Ice) released in English as "Côte d'azur" is "Crustacés et coquillages." This indexes a running joke about consuming shellfish (particularly oysters known as "violettes" though they are yellowish) pumping up libido. The pouty, long-haired teenager Charly (Romain Torres) thinks his parents are overdosing on the shellfish.
They and his visiting friend Martin (Edouard Collins) think that Mathieu spends too much time in the shower (he masturbates there a lot), using up all the hot water in the spacious house on the Côte d'azur (on the Mediterranean, near Nice) that his father, a Paris auto-mechanic named Marc (Gilbert Melki) has inherited. As in classical French sex farces, everyone makes false assumptions about everyone else and fails to suspect what is really going on (which, as in classical French farces, is a good deal of carrying-on).
The teenagers are undergoing teenage angst and exploration. Marc is not comfortable discussing sex/uality, but makes an awkward expression of concern about practicing safe sex. His (originally Dutch) wife Béatrix (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) is more comfortable with her children having becoming sexual beings than Marc is, but her sophistication does not keep her from making her own share of false interpretations/assumptions. Still, she has the best line in the movie: "Teenagers are so conventional." At least they are even more shocked that their parents are sexual beings than Marc is that his children are having sex.
I think that saying almost anything about the plot or saying much about the characters risks spoiling the fun. Although dealing with family and adolescent sexuality as the other Ducastel/Martineau do, this one is more lightweight. It is a "crowd-pleaser" for audiences amused by sexcapades of attractive people spending the summer at the beach (with none of Ozon's portentuousness) With the exception of Mathieu (Jacques Bonnaffé), the cast is attractive. By the end, Charly seems less of a brat than he did initially, and there is a fairy tale (Bollywood?) finale.
There's nothing of particular note to analyze thematically or cinematically. (It seems an altogether lesser-work than The Adventures of Felix, though sharing the open generosity of Felix from that film. The anguishes of the characters are played for laughs, which seems alright in that these are eventually relieved. Those (for instance, the people currently running the US government) who believe that pre-marital or extra-marital sex should be punished by disease, and (preferably) death, will be unamused. Those who find the anarchy of sexual impulses funny—and not necessarily lethal—can enjoy the remaking of the family.
Although there is some simulated sex (most of it autoerotic), it is shot above the waist (so that it may be simulated nudity as well as simulated sex) and the male-male sex is all precoital or postcoital (whereas there are two male-female scenes of simulated coitus) There is a lot of talk about sexuality (Charly's in particular) but nothing graphic that I recall (and I'd recall!).
The DVD includes a trailer for the movie plus trailers for four other Strand releases.
(I'm rounding a 3.5-rating up.)
___
I am not sure I'd consider this a "gay movie" (though my own definition of a "gay movie" is a movie that sleeps with other movies, which this certainly does—including the directors' previous films, especially their musical "Janette and the Perfect Guy," films of Eric Rohmer, and "Come Undone")). It is very, very French, so can be a "French find," though I also intend it as my first of my daily contributions (for the rest of the month) to this year's g/l writeoff, hosted by jps246.
The second is of the Swiss movie, Garçon Stupide.
Plus, Francis Poulenc's concerti for organ and orchestra and for harpsichord and orchestra, and piano concerti, both discs with James Conlon conducting the Rotterdam Philharmonic.
A disc including compositions by gay composers Colin McPhee and Virgil Thomson, plus a wild early work by Roger Sessions.
A book showing and contextualizing the male nudes of John Singer Sargent.
Rolling back to the early and mid-1960s, the documentary Screaming Queens: The [1966] Riot at Compton's Cafeteria and The Tomcat Chronicles.
Two tales of mother love, homosexual/gay sons, and intercultural incomprehension, Jeremy Seabrook's content_237924290180
The amusing comedy from India Mango Souffle and the less amusing (aging not well) 1981 German sex comedy Taxi Zum Klo.
A remarkably vapid and inept movie from Shanghai Shanghai Panic that has a lovelorn dancer (Zhou Zixe) frustrated that his friend (Li Zhinan) will not have sex with him.
©2006, Stephen O. Murray
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.