Ma Loute (2016) Reviews

• La Belle et Malade Epoque

  dromasca2016-08-18

  The centennial anniversary of the breaking of WWI was an opportunity for several books to be written and films to be made (most of them documentaries) not only about the war itself, but also about the years that preceded it. Those were the finals years of a period that had started at the end of the Franco – Prussian war in 1870 and had seen a period of more than four decades of peace, never encountered in the written history of Europe. For many people living it those times La Belle Epoque seemed to signal an apparent stability based on the balance between the power of a few Empires and Republics. A middle class appeared in Europe allowing for economic development, arts flourished, and life was good for many. Yet, the political tensions were present at the level of the relations between the big powers in Europe, and many of the national societies were sick. Which is exactly the theme of Bruno Dumont's film 'Ma Loute'. Dumont is one of the masters of a cinema sub-genre which I will call 'films about degenerated people' (or social, or family relations, or a combination of these. Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet 's Delicatessen is another example of the genre, so is Dogtooth by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. 'Ma Loute' not only takes the genre one step ahead because of the quality of the execution, but also provides political and historical dimensions by locating the story of mysterious disappearances, social conflict between the rich tourists and the poor fishermen and a love story which is impossible for many reasons in a precise place – the North-West of France close to Calais and time – the end of La Belle Epoque. Viewers should be warned that this is no easy film to watch. 5% of the audience walked out the theater I was in. Among those who stayed I suspect that half disliked what they have seen, with the negative reactions between considering the theme disgusting to ridiculous. The acting style is also very heavily and intentionally exaggerated. It is the description of sick families, of hateful relations between classes, of a non-functional society at all levels. The fact that all these seem to get some rational explanation may satisfy for a moment, but then the film slides in a combination of grotesque and fantastic (the levitation scenes) that is close to genial. Watching fine actors as Fabrice Luchini, Juliette Binoche,or Valeria Bruni Tedeschi is of course a delight but do not expect them to act like in any other movies that you have seen with them in the past. The young couple acted by Brandon Lavieville and Raph both at their first film add some level of innocence, but all is under the sign of the deformed mirrors here. 'Ma Louche' is a very different kind of cinema experience, viewers take risks watching it, and they are rewarded with a surprise which according to taste and approach can be very good or very unpleasant.

• Beautiful, surreal , macabre and unexplained

  ayoreinf2016-07-15

  It's a surreal macabre comedy, populated mostly by nasty cartoons, many of them are simply grotesque. While Bruno Dumont, the writer director of this film does tell us a very clear story, namely we all will understand what did actually take place on this bay, he never bothers explaining the reasons for the bizarre behavior of his cartoon characters. So we get an unsolveable mystery filled with mean caricatures of the uppermost bourgeoisie and of the police. He does get some of the best actors and actresses in France hamming their way through this weird story. And I would've rated it higher if I thought there was a reason behind this folly. One thing is sure, even if Dumont has some bizarre reasoning for this story - he doesn't want to reveal it to his audience. One more issue I have to refer to: the name of this film. In English its Slack Bay, which alludes to the bay and to the nature of its residences. In Hebrew it became Disappearance Bay alluding to the mystery taking place there. The French name, that probably is the original is Ma Loute, the name of one of the main characters of this movie. Each name signifies different intentions, and I can't see why the original French name wasn't kept. You don't really have to translate a name.

• Don't let the grossness of the situation put you to sleep

  Dr_Coulardeau2016-07-02

  Let's fall in the hideous, disgusting, sick and bleak mud of a marshy coastal bay somewhere between Boulogne and Gravelines in France, you know where the refugees are slowly rotting away waiting for a miracle to take them across the Channel. The action is at the beginning of the 20th century, before the First World War for sure and the first social upheaval in Nord Pas de Calais in 1906 after the mine accident in Courrières that caused a strike that was broken by Clemenceau's supposedly republican army, but after the first anarchistic upheaval in the coal mines at the end of the 19th century so perfectly described by Emile Zola as a call to all capitalist bourgeois to move their consonants around and become paternalist if they don't want to finish burned up at the stake or broken through on the wheel by the emerging Marxists already known as communists. The film in this no man's land of "Who-Know-Where" concentrates on three sets of people. First the local sailors just pick mussels from the rocks along the coast but do not have any boats to go fishing out at sea. And in the summer they make some centimes, meaning some pennies, by carrying tourists, vacationers, rich bourgeois from Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing across the bay in their own arms. To improve their starving diet they just kill one or two from time to time to add some meat to their poor regimen. Cannibalism, you will say. But you are wrong about it. It is plain survival of those who have the sharpest teeth. The big family of textile bourgeois from Tourcoing, is so inbred that we could doubt they are nothing else but a reborn personification of Tutankhamun, the twisted, humpy, sickly descendant of several generation of inbreeding from brother to sister. The master of the family has a hump and walks like a half-crushed beetle. His wife is hardly better though she is apparently coming from a slightly more distant branch, many second removed cousin, though her brother who is maybe brother in law of the head of the family, or maybe just cousin, or maybe nephew, who knows really since it is the same thing anyway, is not brilliant either and is probably slightly autistic. The head of the family and his wife have two daughters and nothing special about them. The sister of the head of the family has a son, Billie, whose father is doubtful and could be either her own brother or their father, meaning the woman when a teenager was used both by the brother and the father of the lot. That son Billie is the most beautiful perversion of incestuous inbreeding. He is a boy who dresses like a girl and at times when he is bored he is a girl who dresses like a boy. He is courting the adult son of the local fishing family, till that son discovers that girl who dresses like a boy is actually a boy. Add to that the secondary little servants of this rotting society. The priest is innocuous, except that he uses his French language haphazardly. He says "Pêchez en paix!" as if he did not know that may mean both "Fish in peace" or "Sin in peace." The point is he probably means both which is untranslatable in English. The cops, an inflated fat detective, Mr. Machin, meaning, among several dozens of words, "contraption," "doohickey," "gadget," "gizmo," "thingumabob," "thingumajig," "thingummy," "contrivance," and his assistant, definitely fit and slim. And the detective is so full of air that he ends up flying in the sky till some bored soldier shoots the air out of him and makes him descend back onto the surface of the earth. The soldiers are innocuous and valueless except that the colonel at the head of them does not know how to play the bugle he faithfully pretends to sound. And that's it, plus finger-licking nice choice morsels from human bodies cooked in their own blood. Who wants some more foot? The satire is so thick with innuendo and grossness that you will be grossed out. Full stop, period, end of the game. As for the French they speak it is either some snobbish French or some local Picard dialect, anyway, the one like the other, out of reach of any normal humane and civilized person. Don't you try to understand the two linguos or linguas, or you may end up finding out it is even more disgusting than you may have ever thought. Treat it as the language of the prehistoric animals that came before Homo Sapiens and from which we are "unluckily" descending. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

• Strange unusual good film, for curious and dreamers.

  gwenmollo2016-05-20

  Bruno Dumont made a Bruno Dumont film in his original region with real inhabitants. Like Li'l Quinquin, some actors are amateurs, some are pros, sadly... There is no real plot here, no story. Just some days in the North of the France in the 1910's. There are some poetry, comedy, but all of the film is made by the situation of the actors, amateur or pro. The professional are to overdo : Binoche and Luchini are sometimes good, often to much, and so bad... The amateurs voices are always hard to understand, even if your are french. Maybe with the subtitle will be better. I like this film, the photo are not so good (first film for the director in digital) the colors are usually blurry. There is no real story, the actors are inaudible or to overdo, it's hard to understand, the end are (for me ) not good... But ... i like it ! It's funny, shabby, unhealthy, beautiful, full of love, with no mockery. The director like is region, the people from there (like the Redneck in the USA) and made fun with their reputations. It's a little jewel of burlesque, like a Belgian film. It's a unusual film, don't except a traditional thing. Take It As It Comes.

• Desperate 20th century Trostsky inspired view of France. Ultimately Boring

  pierrebarberis2016-05-25

  SO plain and negative on any aspect. The 'Elite' look and feel stupid while the 'workers class' are depicted as ultimately atrocious and ugly human flesh eaters. It's supposed to be a charge creating laughter. In the theater where I saw it, in Paris, NOT a single smile except for one in the last minute. its definitively boring and so biased that i am ashamed it was selected for Cannes. And as to aggravate the picture the only likable character of the movie is an ambiguous boy/girl illustrating the 'genre' quarrel France that has been nurturing recently. STAY AWAY definitively> Don't EVEN DOWNLOAD IT FOR FREE