For a black comedy, Slack Bay isn’t exactly funny. The latest from wacky critical darling Bruno Dumont is a nihilistic, grimace-inducing vaudeville murder mystery. Set in 1910 in Slack Bay, a fictional vacation hotspot in coastal France, it follows the spherical Machin (Didier Després) and his sidekick, Malfoy (Cyril Rigaux), two bumbling detectives investigating a string of disappeared tourists. Machin’s shape and size are played for slapstick laughs, but it’s a taste thing – there are only so many laughs to be squeezed from watching a large man roll down a dune.
The film’s quirky cast of characters also includes the Brufort family (a pack of quietly cannibalistic mussel fishers) and the Van Peteghems (dim aristocrats led by a comically shrill Juliette Binoche). The film looks and feels like a dreary day at the beach, with bleached lighting and too-long takes that do nothing to temper the relentlessly silly burlesque farce.
