Summer Things

For his fourth film as director, Anglomaniac French actor Blanc has adapted Joseph Connolly's Summer Things. Setting aside the novel's pessimism, Blanc has turned it into a Gallic farce of love and betrayal. Lady of leisure Elizabeth (Rampling) is holidaying in Le Touquet. Husband Bertrand (Dutronc) has affairs to attend to in Paris - in particular with his transsexual assistant - so Elizabeth stays at the oh-so-chic Westminster with best friend Julie (Courau), former mistress of Bertrand and soon to fall in love with sex addict Maxime (Elbaz). Julie leaves her baby with Véronique (Karin Viard), another friend of Elizabeth, holidaying with her son and suicidal husband Jérôme (Podalydès). The picture would be incomplete without successful lawyer Lulu (Bouquet), and her jealous husband, journalist Jean-Pierre (Blanc), who threatens to kill himself whenever she speaks to strangers. While everybody in Le Touquet is arguing, drinking, fucking and picnicking, Bertrand and Elizabeth's daughter Emilie (Jane Birkin's daughter Lou Doillon) is in Chicago, snorting coke and having an affair with one of her father's employees. Blanc's light and scathing treatment of these couples in disarray lends a bitter edge to a comedy in which words and cruel puns stab like knives. Only one couple is left unscathed. Guess who?