L'Hôtel de la plage (1978)
Directed by Michel Lang

Film Review

The name Michel Lang may not mean much today but in his time - the 1970s and early 1980s - he was one of the most successful of mainstream filmmakers in France, a director with an unerring flair for turning out modest, lowbrow films with enormous public appeal.  À nous les petites Anglaises (1976) was his biggest hit, but L'Hôtel de la plage also did pretty well, attracting an audience of 2.8 million and effectively launching a sub-genre in French cinema that endures to this day - the family-friendly holiday movie.  The popularity of Fabien Onteniente's film Camping (2006) and its sequels owes much to Lang's modest dose of sand, sea and sex.

Don'r expect L'Hôtel de la plage to offer anything in the way of originality or sophistication.  It's a relentlessly lowkey offering of limited ambition, content merely to serve up pretty anodyne slices of life for the amusement of as wide a cross-section of French society as possible.  Today it appears unimaginably tame, and it was so even when it was first seen.  The humour is of the kind that would offend no-one and is unlikely to have audiences - no matter how inebriated - rolling in the aisles.  The best that Lang can give us is mild amusement, and he plays the nostalgia card for all it is worth (as he did in practically all of his films).

Clever and adventurous the film certainly isn't, but it abounds with plenty of good natured charm, although this has more to do with the calibre of the cast than the quality of the script.  There are few 'big names' in the cast-list, but plenty of very capable actors who would be familiar to French cinemagoers of the time.   Myriam Boyer, Daniel Ceccaldi, Guy Marchand and Francis Lemaire - to name just four - all succeed in bringing their humdrum characters to life, conveying more emotional depth and inner complexity than you would expect for mainstream slush of this ilk.

Occasionally, there comes along a scene which teeters on the brink of profundity, but this passes too quickly and we are back to facile gags and wry observations on the holiday theme.  The film's nervous forays into adolescent romancing are cute but hardly revelatory - more sweetly sick than bitter-sweet - but a more authentic handling of the subject would obviously be beyond Lang's incredibly limited remit.  L'Hôtel de la plage remains something of a minor classic in France, an unpretentious, inoffensive little movie whose main appeal is that it provides us with a happy excursion back in time to our own holiday escapades, which were probably no more exciting than those depicted in this film.

Film Synopsis

The arrival of August, the month of long summer holidays offering freedom from school and work, is eagerly awaited by every man, woman and child in France.  Situated in the sunniest of Brittany resorts, with beaches of pristine golden sand stretching as far as the eye can see, the Hôtel de la plage is a popular summer retreat for young and old alike.  As is the case every August, the region is swarming with fugitives from the cities, all intent on pleasure and relaxation - not to mention a certain amount of mischief.

In this paradise on Earth there is no shortage of husbands cheating on their wives, wives cheating on their husbands, teenagers making the most of their first amorous encounters and hyperactive children wildly hurling themselves into their seaside romp.  The latest arrivals include Euloge Saint-Prix and his wife Cécile, the Guedels and their daughters Catherine and Juliette, and a Belgian couple, Odette and Lucien Vermaelen, with their twins.  Innocence and virginity are both seriously under threat as smart-talking Romeos of all ages embark on their full-on love offensive, carried along on a tide of mid-summer madness that never seems to end...