Bruno Dumont's film Slack Bay (French title La Moute), released in the U. S. last year, resists easy labels and categorizations. It somehow manages to be both baldly plain in its purpose and entirely baffling. Most critics responded with either disinterest or disgust. Audiences hated it even more, judging by its 35% score on Rotten Tomatoes. I found it thrilling. Calling it merely a "farce" might be too tame for capturing just what boundaries it crosses and how far it goes. There is a cartoonish quality in which bourgeois culture is savagely lampooned (Juliet Binoche has never skittered about the screen quite so dimwittedly and hysterical as she does in Dumont's film). But, underneath the hijinks, there's a heart black as coal. Slack Bay takes the "eat the rich" dictum literally, and never before have I seen a film shuffle back and forth between the genres of screwball and body-horror so nonchalantly. Stately compositions and strikingly crisp cinematography frame these otherwise incongruous worlds, adding to the overall absurdist conflation that is this film. Slack Bay strikes so many outlandish postures at once, it seems absolutely capable of anything. During the film, one character, played by Fabriche Luchini, remarks on his estate's view overlooking the eponymous bay, "One sees it so much, one no longer notices it anymore." Nothing is familiar in Slack Bay, and, because of that, you notice everything.

What a waste of time.

Una delicia absoluta.

I've wasted 2 hours of my life that I can't get back.

I found this mostly irritating and very unfunny when I watched it. Every time that something happened which piqued my interest, a moment or two later some piece of leaden humour - usually involving someone falling over - would kill the pleasure. It just shows how brilliant Laurel and Hardy were in creating timeless comedy out of the same ingredients of physical humour and simplistic characterization.

This is one of the strangest movies I've ever seen. Some brilliant actors performing so over-the-top it becomes annoying and embarrassing. The director takes desperate measures to insert laugh-aloud moments in a dark comedy that includes graphic cannibalism, but in the end they lead nowhere, which led many in the screening I attended to the exit.

I don't know what my expectations for this film could've been, I would hoped for something humorous as well as authentic given the production scale and period setting. Although, as much as given this film could've gone either route, it eventually descends into obscurity and sophistication distorting the main focus of the narrative, either within the plotting of the film that takes an almost sparse turn for the Horror comedy or an over melodramatic murder mystery thrown in with a comedic blood feud sub plot. As much as I wanted to like this film, as well as I wanted to be invested in the plot and characters, it's the derailing of the film's tone and focus that eventually I really began to question after the very end of the film, 'What the F*ck did I just watch?'. In a way the film is "weird" in the most sophisticated manner, I couldn't tell if it was intentionally made this way or not, I don't recommend it for casual viewers nor for those looking for a new potential cult favourite. I don't see myself re-watching this anytime soon, probably within a few years before I might... give it a second chance.