Les Vacanciers (1974) - film review

The Chatton family – Benjamin, Rosy, and their two grown-up children, Philippe and Charlotte – plan to spend a month’s holiday in a village in Alsace.  When they arrive at the house in which they have rented rooms, they receive a far from friendly welcome from its owner, Aloyse Frankensteinmuhl.  The latter is unaware that his eccentric wife has let the rooms to supplement her income.  As the Chattons try to make the best of their holiday, Aloyse becomes increasingly hostile towards them.  His attitude changes when his Aunt Aimée – the true owner of his house – reveals she has taken a fancy to the Chatton’s son…

This rambling madcap comedy wouldn’t be worth so much as a casual glance were it not for the sheer enthusiasm of its cast and its frothy, hippy-inspired sense of fun.  You get the impression that the entire cast and crew were happily dosing themselves up to the eyeballs with hallucinogenic drugs between takes, such is the unbelievably laid back narrative style and seemingly limitless bounds of eccentricity in the acting performances.  Anyone who thought the 1970s was dull, characterless and miserable should take a look at this film and realise just how kitsch, Devil-may-care and mind-bogglingly weird most of the decade was, in spite of political and economic meltdown in much of Europe, interminable wars in the Far East and the ever present threat of nuclear annihilation.

As if sourced from an exhaustive compendium of comedy, the jokes running rampant in this film cover the entire spectrum from the utterly puerile, to the brilliantly observant, with more than a smattering of the totally obscene.  The dialogue is generally awful (whoever wrote the script should be shot) but the visual jokes work rather well.   Just in case the film failed to sell on the strength of its comedy, there’s a healthy dollop of male and female nudity calculated to earn it a soft-core porn classification.  (Well, it is a French comedy.)  In the most notorious scene, an attractive man and woman – supposedly brother and sister – hose each other down and generally frolic about, al fresco, in their birthday suits, as if it were the kind of thing French people got up to every day (maybe they did – when Valery Giscard d’Estang was in power).

Les Vacanciers is an utterly mad, unrestrainedly chaotic film, which no one with a University degree would admit to having watched (let alone enjoyed).  Yet, for all its innumerable faults and crazy indulgences, it’s one of those things which, whilst it’s obviously not good for you, has a bizarre, inexplicable appeal, and even manages to make you laugh.  You probably wouldn’t want to watch it more than once, though...

© James Travers 2007

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