Cross-Channel capers

Does English farce travel well? Across the Channel, in the hands of a French ma"tre of black comedy like writer-director Michel (Monsieur Hire) Blanc, it certainly does. Joseph Connolly's waspish novel Summer Things was already half-Feydeauesque, with British-based oddballs rotating in a churning status quo of misunderstandings and infidelities.

But relocated in sunny Le Touquet, and turned into the misalliances of two French families, their children and mistresses, holidaying together, it gains a Gallic bite, a melancholy tenderness, and a surprising amount of transgressive sex. Done in English, as a

Certificate 12A sitcom caper, full of estuarine shrieks and bellows, flashes of tit and bum, and (inevitably, I fear) Ray Winstone, it might have been a broadly funny seaside postcard; but in French, with a precision of language gracing its lightness of touch, it is a sophisticated cartoon.

Charlotte Rampling is one of those busy ladies-who-lunch with a rich husband (the equine-faced Jacques Dutronc). He takes the chance to stay at home with his transsexual black mistress ( Mickaël Dolmen), while his ex-lover (Clotilde Courau) and her bawling baby take his place and the family join forces at the coast resort with their best friends. The latter are stony-broke but concealing it, pretending to live it up at the Grand Hotel while keeping their heads down in a mobile home in a tatty trailer park.

The husband (Denis Podalydes) is a depressive who collects antique gas-meters - manhole covers, in Connolly's version - and is on countdown to attempted suicide; the wife (Karin Viard) is desperate to save face at any cost not actually involving money, and the teenage son (Gaspard Ulliel) is at the age when life is a black hole.

Blanc, who casts himself as a husband who goes from jealous to homicidal in 60 seconds if any man looks at his wife (Carole Bouquet), creates a non-stop la ronde of sly takes on bourgeois hypocrisies and tunnel-vision tantrums. Yet pathos steals in, too, with Rampling and the young boy enjoying one of those "older woman and male virgin" nights that the French do guiltlessly with eyes open, and the English do (if at all) with theirs closed.

There is also a rebel daughter (Lou Doillon) off for a fling of her own in Chicago, who manages to enjoy oral sex and use a mobile phone - both at once.

I suggest you read the novel before or after viewing: the double vision adds to the summery delight.

Summer Things (Embrassez Qui Vous Voudrez)
Cert: cert15