ulicknormanowen

Coming after the 1976 French blockbuster " à nous les petites Anglaises ", "l'hôtel de la plage " has worn much better : today it's a time capsule : if you want to know how middle-class Frenchies spent their vacation circa late seventies, this is definitely the movie to choose : filmed on location in Brittany it features several subplots ,most of them dealing with love affairs and rivalries ; a particularly good moment is the granny abandoned on the beach while the tide rises;but don't panic! It's a comedy.

Title track sung by pop singer Sheila ; but the best song was written by famous Mort Shuman who was fluent in French : "un été de porcelaine" .

Ferdinand, a young photographer, meets Claire, a pretty thief, in a bar with whom he falls in love. One day, he photographs her with a man and is knocked unconscious and his film stolen. Questioned by the police, he remains silent. Claire, touched by this attention, then reveals to him that the man who accompanied her is a crook who is bullying her. The two young people then try to start a new life together, but a multitude of obstacles will stand in their way.

Dany Carrel is sexy, Jacques Perrin is the naive boyish young man .Fine music by Georges Delerue .But the screenplay is hackneyed and desultory (forget the background and this kind of story could have been filmed in the thirties);Audiard 's lines are disappointingly flat,and the ending comes at the most awkward moment ;Hossein is spoiled in a cardboard character .Pierre Brasseur hams it up .

One could prefer Korber's first effort ,"le 17e ciel" (1965),starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Marie Dubois, on which the romantic feel was much better applied .