Every August, the French take a vacation for the entire month, giving them an opportunity to engage in reflection and recreation, perhaps even personal growth. A popular destination for the affluent is the coastal Mediterranean, where the cool waters take the edge off the warm sun, and clothing can be informal. The part of France known as the côte d'azur, the beautiful area around Nice, is more sensual than Brittany, which was the venue for a vaguely similar coming-of-age Come Undone (Presque Rien) (2001). Indeed, Côte d'Azur (Crustacés & Coquillages), directed by Oliver Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, ups the ante by providing a coming-of-age story not only for teenage boys but also for their adult parents. As a teenager or young adult, Marc Biancheri (played by Gilbert Melki) visited his family's house in the côte d'azur for several years, and he evidently had his first serious sexual experience during those Augusts. After the death of his grandparents and great aunt, he has now inherited a windfall--the house by the shore. When the film begins, he is taking his wife Béatrix (played by Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi), seventeen-year-old son Charly (played by Romain Torres), and nineteen-year-old daughter Laura (played by Sabrina Seyvencou) to the house at the shore for the month. Shortly after their arrival, Laura takes off for Portugal with her leatherclad boyfriend Michaël (played by Yannick Baudin) on a motorcycle. Béatrix takes note of Michaël's handsome posterior revealed through the tight leather garment as well as her liberated half-Dutch ancestry, a hint to Marc that she seeks sexual satisfaction during the month. Later, with the arrival of Martin (played by Édouard Collin), her son's teenage boyfriend, she speculates that they are closeted gays; her clue is that they occupy different bedrooms. Marc, not interested in talking about sexual matters, occasionally gives his wife some satisfaction, but she has notified her lover Mathieu (played by Jacques Bonnaffé) of her whereabouts for the month. When Mathieu arrives, announcing himself by cellphone one night, Béatrix proceeds to sneak away for trysts with him, while he presses her to divorce Marc so that they can live together. Strangely, Charly and Martin are not having sex with each other this summer. Effeminate and sexually conflicted, Charly prefers to masturbate in the shower, therein using up the limited quantity of hot water to the frustration of his father. Flummoxed by Charly's unexpected sexual rejection, masculine Martin goes to a late-night cruising spot for action. Among the older gays at the cruising spot, Martin meets Didier (played by Jean-Marc Barr), a macho plumber. On another evening, Charly appears jealous of Martin as the latter goes to the cruising spot; he follows and meets Didier, while Martin is approached by another older gay. Finally, Marc overreacts to a rear view of Martin's use of the shower as a venue for teenage masturbation by disconnecting the hot water valve. When Charly later calls for a plumber to fix the problem, Didier shows up, encounters Marc alone, and more secrets are revealed. Evidently, Didier and Marc were lovers some twenty years earlier. When Marc preferred marriage with Béatrix, Didier moved to California to get over being jilted. Now Didier has returned to France, a macho-appearing man in top physical condition who immediately seduces Marc into bed, where he is the bottom in a handcuffed off-screen sexual encounter. If Côte d'Azur were a soap opera, the following questions would be asked: Will Béatrix divorce Marc to marry her lover Mathieu? Will Charly and Martin become lovers? Without revealing the answers, Côte d'Azur ends by affirming the desirability of bisexuality and extramarital affairs, a not altogether surprising conclusion, thus adding to the genre of French (and Spanish) films that feature bisexuality as a legitimate lifestyle, most recently Confusion of Genders (2003). However, filmviewers in France have undoubtedly been laughing heartily at themselves during the clever unfolding of the story, unlike puzzled Americans, and the ending is a Bollywood-style musical number that hints that all pretence has been dropped, and everyone has happily found joie de vivre. MH
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