Bord de mer

This is another charmer. The great thing about France is that filmmakers are allowed to make 'small' films like this without being penalized. In the same year (2002) for example Le Chignon d'Olga was also released and between them both films racked up something like 100,000 admissions but nobody yelled, no heads rolled, in fact Julie Lopes-Curval who directed Bord de mer went on to write La role de sa vie which co-screenwriter of Bord de mer, Francois Favrat, directed and with Agnes Jaoui and Karin Viard co-starring 'Role' was a much more high-profile project. Not a lot happens in Bord de mer. If you want an analogy it's something like Walden if Thoreau had been part of a community. It's just a record of a year in a small seaside town which is virtually almost always out-of-season even in the summer because the only visitors are regulars, most of whom own property rather than staying in hotels/pensions. It's a company town to the extent that a small family company 'mine' the sea for stones which are then 'sorted' by the locals and used to manufacture anything that CAN be manufactured from pebbles. We follow a handful of people, the best known being Bulle Ogier and Ludmilla Mikhael, ex-Comedy Francaise as they are, in the immortal words of Johnny Burke, busy doing nothing. The film is shot in lovely, not to say restful, pastels and a second viewing some two years later was just as enjoyable as the initial one.