Customer Reviews
Complex emotions on the French coast. - By: Nicholas Casley, 12 Aug 2007 
A smalll French family drama that has tragic consequences. Gaspard Ulliel plays nineteen-year-old Simon who travels from Paris where he attends art college on the overnight train to his family's holiday home on the west coast of France. On the journey he is joined by a young girl, who looks uncannily like Simon & of whom the parents take to be his girlfriend.
But Simon's eyes seem more focussed on the young local lighthouse-keeper, Matthew, & an unspoken competition for Matthew's attention builds up between Simon & the girl. In the background, Simon's mother & father are going through a bad patch, with the mother reliving a former relationship with an old flame from twenty years previously. Both of these strands produce a shocking conclusion in the film's final shot.
The story is well-acted & realisticallly shot. My only complaint is that the longueurs are only too real, with lots of time spent with very little taking place, but I guess this slowly builds up the tension. Simon himself is undemonstrative, so it is difficult sometimes to know exactly what he is thinking, but the benefit is that this makes the ending so shockingly unexpected.
This is not a 'gay' film as such, & can be viewed more as a family drama, involving young people trying to come to terms with their feelings.
A good film.
